


And All of Death's Angels

by Winterstar



Series: This is battle; this is war. [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, BDSM, Dom Tony, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Sub Steve, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-02-24 13:22:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2582918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's been kidnapped, and Steve's been brutally shot....the team must assemble and save them, but will they be on time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Nails grip the edge of the tile, pulling, straining. The sounds of booted feet clambering down the stairwell echo. He needs to get to help, he needs to save Tony. He coughs and there’s a smear of blood, and he chokes on the metal taste. He grabs for the tile again, using the strength in his shoulders to slide himself along the tiled floor. He hears the assailants calling, ordering Tony into the helicopter. He doesn’t have much time. He has no time. He needs to get help.

“JARVIS,” he gurgles and knows it doesn’t come out right. The pain and blood chew his words. He heaves his body forward, he cannot stand on his legs, but he can get to the elevator, even with the holes in his chest. He can do this. He grunts out again, clearer this time, more imperative, “JARVIS.”

There’s no answer, but he keeps trying, keeps forcing his upper body to pull his useless bleeding body toward the elevator. He hears the blades of the helicopter slice the air. 

“Tony,” he cries out and blood splatters the floor from his mouth. He groans and gets to the elevator. It’s closed. Outside the observation deck, the helicopter’s engine roars to life. 

“JARVIS, op-ope-open,” Steve says and slams his fist against the closed doors. 

The elevator stays closed. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he hoists enough to reach, stretch to the button. He misses it the first time. The copter out on the landing pad begins to lift. He feels the vibration of it through the floor, the structure of the observation deck. Again, he lifts himself up, his legs protest and he lets out a scream. There’s no one there to hear him. He hits the button.

The doors open.

Grabbing the ridge of the floor, the gap between the elevator car and the deck, he manages to drag his damaged body into the elevator. “JARVIS- ple-please.” 

No answer and he shivers as he flops over and stares at the ceiling of the car. The doors close. The rumble of the copter reminds him he doesn’t have time. With what little strength he has left, he pushes with his left arm against the floor until he flips over. The impact of his chest against the floor funnels his vision and he sees stars bright against the blackness. He grits his teeth as he moans. No one is here, he can cry out. 

Grappling, he gropes for the railing in the elevator, grabs it and heaves himself up until he slams the control panel with his palm. He doesn’t even care what floor. He just wants the elevator to move. 

It begins its descent. 

He collapses against the corner of the elevator, his sight dark and fogged. He only sees the red stains in the car, and he wonders at that since he doesn’t remember it being painted red. 

“Blood,” he murmurs and laughs, the laughter comes out of him as a bubble of unruly emotion until it transforms, turning in racking sobs that spike pain through his chest and his ruined legs. 

A blast shakes the building and the lights go out in the elevator as it is flung uncontrollably into the shaft. He doesn’t know what the hell happened, he doesn’t know why, all he wishes for is the darkness threatening on the edge of his perceptions to quiet the pain searing through him. 

The elevator judders as the vibrations of the explosion spread and Steve is thrown against the wall of the elevator, letting out a scream of pain. The elevator’s brakes engage and the car stops. 

“JA-Ja-.” Steve opens his mouth and a flood of blood spews out and now when the darkness comes he does not welcome it.

 **BRUCE**  
His phone rings as he’s finishing up in the quiet booth in the corner of the small India restaurant not a half block from the Tower. Bruce digs the phone out of his pocket as he deposits a tip on the table and, with hunched shoulders, leaves the restaurant. The proprietor calls out a farewell and Bruce only nods and gives a finger wave as he opens up the connection on his phone. 

“Banner?” he says as he checks the traffic, weaving through it to get to the other side of the street. 

“Bruce, Bruce?” 

“Pepper?” Bruce says as a taxi whips by him and he holds back a curse. Every chance to practice his control is worth it. 

“Bruce, are you at the Tower, what’s happening at the Tower?” Pepper asks, her voice strained. “I can’t get in touch with Tony.”

“What? No, I’m not at the Tower. Last I saw Tony was in his workshop, getting at the root of the problem with JARVIS. I’m going back to the Tower now.”

“You have to get there, now,” Pepper says and he can tell by the tension in her voice that she’s holding back fear, anger. It’s something he’s learned to detect.

“I’m on my way,” Bruce says as he jogs down the street.

“Tony called, Steve’s been shot,” Pepper says.

“What?” He stops and turns around. “What?”

“He called me, why would he call me?”” Pepper says. “He called from a number – they had to patch him through. He called the open line.”

“What?” Nothing is making sense and he’s irritated. “Pepper, slow down.” He tells himself the same thing and focuses on what needs to be done. He starts back on his path to the Tower.

“Tony called, said to call you, said that Steve was shot.”

That’s when it happens, that’s when the world opens up and cracks, splits like an egg. He falls on the ground as the Tower above him bursts and the people scream and scramble around him. 

“Bruce? Bruce?” Pepper asks again and again.

“I-I gotta go,” Bruce says. He cuts the line and races to the Tower, the change, the transformation hanging close to the surface, so close he knows that his cheeks are flush with green and his eyes may be shifting as well.

Through the barrage of people running out of the Tower, he pushes his way in. He goes immediately through the locked doors in the lobby that lead to the Avengers only section. The iris pattern recognition works and Bruce silently thanks Tony for including the Hulk’s features for recognition.

He uses his phone as he hits the elevator button. No answer from Tony. “Damn it.” He needs to find Tony, he needs to find Steve. For a moment he’s lost in what he should do but then searches through his apps on his StarkPhone and finds the Avengers app. 

He selects Avengers Assemble and then he adds, _Tower_. 

Deciding the best place to start is Tony’s workshop, Bruce presses the button to access the workshop. From this elevator and not the more secure, private ones, he needs to use the iris identification again. The elevator responds instantly and there’s emergency lighting.

“This elevator is currently not in service due to an emergency situation, please contact the local fire department or police.”

“Son of a bitch,” Bruce says and tears open the control panel, rips at the wires and gets the damned thing to start moving upward. When it finally halts, he’s very nearly on the edge of transforming. 

He cannot do that now. “No.” He squeezes his fists into his eyes and waits as the doors to the workshop level open. He staggers out, holding onto the wall. He manages, somehow to make it to the workshop. The holographs are still on, the place looks as if Tony only just left.

He swallows down the anxiety, forces the anger into a compartment, and then says, “JARVIS?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re working?”

“I am partially functioning in the workshop and some of the major access ways to the Tower. My self-diagnostics indicate I am still not functioning correctly.”

“Can you tell me where Tony is?”

“No, I cannot.”

Bruce decides that later might be a good idea to find out if JARVIS can’t or if Tony is not in the Tower currently. “Can you tell me where Captain Rogers is?”

“Yes, Doctor Banner.”

“Where?” Bruce says and he’s barely contained.

“Captain Rogers is currently in an elevator on the twenty fifth floor.”

Bruce frowns. “The elevator stopped?”

“Yes.”

“Which elevator?”

“One of the private elevators in the bank that leads to the penthouse and the observation deck.” 

Bruce turns on his heel and heads to the elevators while his phone buzzes. He tugs it out of his pocket as he enters the elevator and realizes the damned thing is not working. “JARVIS, can you override the emergency systems with the elevator?” He adds to the connection on the phone. “Banner?”

“What is it?” Natasha asks.

“We have an attack on the Tower. Injuries including the Captain. Iron Man is missing.”

“We’re on our way back from the bogus intel. It’ll take a few hours, what help do you need?”

“Call in Wilson and whoever else you can find?” Bruce says.

“We got an Air Force pilot, Captain Danvers who might be able to help,” Natasha says.

“Anyone, just get them here,” Bruce says and he can feel the heat of rage throb through his muscles, his nerves. He’s not holding it together very much longer. “And you, get here as soon as you can.”

“We are.”

“Make sure of it,” he says and clenches his hand around the phone. He can’t hold it any longer and knows it’s coming as the phone shatters in his hands. “JARVIS?”

“I am not operating completely predictably, Doctor Banner. I am trying,” JARVIS says and then the elevator abruptly begins to rise. He grips the side rail and tries to wait it out, doing slow breathing exercises to calm his nerves. Bringing air in through the nostrils, then holding it, then releasing it through his mouth. This will work, he knows it will.

The elevator opens on the appropriate floor and Bruce says, “Thanks JARVIS.”

The A.I. does not answer. He’s not willing to figure out what’s happening now, but goes to the other elevators in the bank, and starts pressing buttons trying to open them. “JARVIS?”

Again, no answer. “Damn it, open the damned doors.” He pounds on one of the elevators and the words Pepper said echo in his head. Steve shot. And then he sees the explosion occur again as he squeezes his eyes closed and crumples into the corner. 

“Hold it, hold it,” he growls and slams his fist on the button to open the elevator door. He doesn’t question it when the doors to all the elevators move and then open at once. Stumbling to his feet, his blood hot and beating in his ears, he hurries to the car. 

“God damn it,” Bruce says and, for one terrible moment, he’s paralyzed when his sight falls on Steve lying supine, blood pooled around him in an obscene puddle, his legs deformed and angled sickly. “He can’t be alive. He can’t be.” He staggers into the elevator and touches Steve’s face. It’s cold. Tears burn his cheeks as he feels the heat of transformation overtake him. 

Blood trickles out of Steve’s mouth as Bruce fumbles and pitches forward on his hands and knees. He needs to stop this, he needs to move forward find out if Steve’s alive. Reaching he puts a finger to Steve’s neck. 

Steve’s eyes flash open and Bruce staggers back.

“Steve,” Bruce says and he physically claws at his eyes, at his hair trying to keep it together a little while longer.

“As-sem,” Steve rasps and his body convulses. “Em-b-.”

Bruce grasps his hand and cups Steve’s face, seeing that his own hand is enlarged, turning, shifting to green. He doesn’t have much time. “Steve, come on stay with me.”

“To-.” Steve coughs and there’s more blood not only from his mouth but oozing from his chest. “Ton-.”

“Don’t worry, we got this, we got this,” Bruce says and that’s the last he knows because his life is not his own and there’s someone lurking on the edge of his sanity at all times. He hasn’t a choice and, though he fights he must succumb. He only hopes the other guy will be gentle, careful, and understand how critically important their Captain is.


	2. Chapter 2

The pain continues, becomes a part of his definition but there is warmth here, too. Hands, strong and frighteningly huge push underneath his ruined body to gather him up. He tries to open his eyes but his lids are heavy, weighted with the fear of agony. But he’s never backed down, even when it’s been a hopeless fight, he always stands up. He groans as his body shifts and lifts into arms, cradling him.

Opening his eyes is still a struggle, but he does. A great and massive shadow falls over him and he thinks it might be a blanket. This brings a laugh to him but when he tries, spears like fire shoot through his chest. A harsh baritone answers him, telling him with a humming hush to quiet. 

The arms, green and large, curl him into the massive bare chest, a hand covers his face and then the green monster begins to run. Steve wants to cling to him, hold on, but he doesn’t have the energy, the blood leaking out of him drains him of any hope. The loping run culminates as the monster turns his shoulder and smashes against the large window at the end of the hallway. Steve’s senses, clouded and blurred, come alive as the glass shatters around him, the shards exploding like fireworks. 

And then they plummet.

Steve arches in the arms of the giant, losing sight of what is happening, falling into the terror of pain, and loss, and fear. Like a ping pong ball they collide with something, skipping off it to be fling again. It is harrowing and disturbing. Again they hit the side of something, a building, and skid along it until they jump again. His insides feel loose and stringy as if they are a ball of yarn being rip apart by a too playful cat. He wants so much for the darkness to come again, but it doesn’t. He thinks his legs must have separated, bone, ligament, splitting open and then he feels them slide sideways downward to impact with the ground.

Abruptly he’s released with tender care, but his sense are tumbling about him and he hates the idea of the giant, the Hulk he reasons, leaving him.

“Bruc-.” He cannot manage more than partial words, his mouth is so full of death and sickness, decay and hopelessness. But then someone else’s face appears as he lies on the ground, like a discarded toy, helpless, broken, disabled.

“Sir, sir, we’re going to help you.”

“Ton-.” He spits out blood and the world, his vision, throbs a beat around him. 

Behind the man (or woman – Steve cannot focus) he hears a growl loud and menacing. He knows he should calm the Hulk, but he cannot move. He tries. A hand presses on his shoulder, gentle, and he thinks – Tony.

“’onee,” he murmurs. The person hunched over him, a woman now, he sees that, calls for help. There are people swarming around him and he looks up to the see the flash of sirens and lights and a ball of fire still raging in the sky.

 **Sam**  
“But really, how’re you doing?” Sam says and he spreads his arms along the back of the booth. Steve left a little over thirty minutes ago, but he’s still hanging with the former girlfriend, Sharon.

“Why do you ask?” She shrugs and shakes her head. “You know you don’t have to be everyone’s counselor.”

“I know that look when I see it. You’re carrying a torch for him,” Sam says and plays with the empty coffee cup, pushing in the little tabs on the plastic top of the cup. He tells himself he stayed because he wanted to grab a bite to eat and, it so happened, Sharon did, too.

She gives a quick sidelong glance over her shoulder where Steve disappeared into the crowded coffee shop and out the door to lower Manhattan. “Nah, no, not really.”

“Not really, are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

Her smile is sweetness and strength all wrapped into one. “Maybe a little of both.” She peels off the sticker from her juice bottle. “Listen, I should go-.”

“For what it’s worth, I think he really did like you,” Sam says.

“Yeah, but not as much as he liked someone else,” Sharon says and he reacts, before he can squash the look of surprise. “Look, I’m a spy by training, I know what to look for, so please don’t deny it.”

Sam puts his hands up and shakes his head. “Not going to, but you’re okay?”

“Sam, you’re not the counselor for the world. I’m fine.”

“You just, you don’t seem fine?” he says as she starts playing with her purse. He might not be a spy but he can read the signs of a woman getting ready to leave. 

“I will be. Steve’s,” she says and stops. Nodding, she adds, “Steve’s a great catch. Tony’s lucky.”

“You know?”

She smiles. “Now I do.”

They both laugh and she stands up. “It was good to meet you, Sam.”

“Good to meet you, too,” he says and stands up. He has to get back to the hotel and pack up. He was only in town to look for an apartment, even though Steve offered a place at the Tower for him. He’d like to have some perspective on this bunch of heroes and misfits, so he thinks he’ll stay out of the fray for a while. 

“Share a cab?”

“Sure thing.” He grabs the coffee cups and tosses them in the trash as they make their way out of the coffee shop. As they hit the street Sam’s phone vibrates in his back pocket.

He tugs it out at the same time a massive, deafening explosion ruptures the sky to the west and he grabs Sharon to take cover back into the coffee shop. Customers in the shop scramble to the windows, several people screech, a number take out their phones and race outside even as Sam commands them not to.

“Bunch of idiots,” Sam says and his phone continues to call him.

Sharon’s next to him near the window of the shop with her ear pressed against her phone. She’s reporting to someone. Between his insistent phone and the people starting to stream outside to get a view of what’s going on, Sam decides on his phone first.

“Wilson.”

“Sam, are you still in New York?”

“Yeah, Natasha, are you okay?”

There’s a pause on the line. “Yes, fine. I need you to go to the Tower-.”

“Natasha, are you at the Tower?” Sam says, the sounds of sirens fill the airwaves and people are flooding toward the building down the block.

“No, Clint and I are on our way back-.”

“Natasha, there’s been some kind of explosion. We saw it all the way down the block, looks like it blew up the entire top deck of the Tower,” Sam reports. “Are the Avengers under attack, do you know?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha responds but her voice is tight. “I got a phone call from Bruce, he was on his way to the Tower, because Pepper – Tony’s CEO – got a call from Tony saying that Steve had been shot.”

“What?” he says and Sharon startles next to him. “I’m on it.”

“Sam,” Natasha says. “Be careful, we’re coming in but won’t be there for a few hours. And Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a big possibility that it’s Hydra, and if Bruce found them-.”

Sam nods even though she can’t see him. “Yeah, I know, big, green, and mean.

“See you in a few hours.”

He disconnects and to her credit, Sharon says, “Let’s go.”

He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t interrogate her. They exit the coffee shop once more and shove through the streets as the traffic comes to a halt and the crowds of people thicken once they cross over to the block where the Tower sits. People are standing staring upward, pointing at the wreckage at the top of Avengers Tower.

Some are crying.

Some are questioning – where is Iron Man? Where are the Avengers?

Some even worry it might be a terrorist attack.

Others are on their phones and some snap pictures. It disgusts Sam as he watches people try and angle their phones to get a selfie of the burning Tower. Sam purposefully knocks into the yahoos as he and Sharon force their way through the growing crowds. 

They aren’t more than half a New York block from the focal point as police and emergency vehicles converge on the Avengers Tower. It takes them more than thirty minutes to make the distance and when they do get there a ring of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars block their way. Thankfully, Sharon flashes her badge and it affords them entrance to the inner circle but not into the Tower. The fire chief hasn’t assessed the damages and several of the occupants are still filing out of the massive tower.

“We need to get inside, Avengers business,” Sam says, trying to pull off his best military voice.

The fire chief scoffs. “Oh yeah, which one are you?”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he says, “You did see all the footage on line of the fall of Hydra into the Potomac, didn’t you? You saw the Falcon.”

“I saw something, nothing telling me it was any dude in an old VA t-shirt and running shorts.” The fire chief looks him up and down.

Sharon chimes in. She flashes her badge again. “We need access to check and see if this is a direct attack on the Avengers or if it’s an attack on New York.”

“Or both,” Sam adds.

The fire chief, an older man with round cheeks and belly, studies them, and then relents and nods. “I understand, Miss, but right now, no one is going in that building. We can’t assess its integrity or if there will be more explosions. And right now, I’m more concerned about evacuating the building and not inviting more people into it.”

“We need in-.” Sam starts as he digs out his phone, hoping to get someone on the line that might help – but he’s interrupted when, from above, an explosion of glass fracturing, rupturing outward. Everyone jerks in response and then turns to face the sky as a large giant emerges with the glass – leaping and skipping along the buildings.

“It’s Banner,” Sam says and they race to follow his path. 

When the Hulk lands it crushes the pavement beneath him and the ground vibrates and shakes as if there is an earthquake. Several of the emergency responders follow Sam and Sharon, though they hang back until the Hulk gently deposits a limp figure on the ground. Banner’s alter ego howls at the world and then steps away as if giving passage to the paramedics.

One brave soul, a woman paramedic with wide eyes and dark curly hair pulled back, accepts the invitation and crouches near the Captain’s side. Sam cannot help but tremble at the sight. He’s seen injured before, damn it to hell, he’s seen Steve ravaged by his best friend. His eyes are riveted to Steve. What’s happened to him can only be described as harsh and cruel.

Steve’s crying out and Sharon’s on the phone again, but Sam’s hunching over him. The paramedic look up at him, about to question. “I’m his friend. This is Ca-.”

“Captain America, yeah, I know,” the paramedic says. She turns to her colleagues and the police. “Get me a gurney over here. Call it in, he’s got multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and both legs. He’s lost a lot of blood, he’s shocky, and he’s actively bleeding out of the mouth, suggesting a punctured lung.”

“What can I do?” Sam says as the other paramedics swarm around them, the activity becomes a flurry of motion that Sam cannot follow. There’s a gurney, a back board, and they turn Steve while he vomits blood over the concrete pavement as they place him on the gurney. 

Police hold the crowd back and the world seems larger, stranger, and out of focus. Someone has their hand on Sam’s shoulder, his chest as the paramedics cart Steve away and the Hulk disappears.

“Sam, they want to know if you’re going to the hospital. I told them you’re his friend,” Sharon says and the words rupture the bubble of disbelief. 

He shakes himself and comes back to the horror of reality. “He wanted Tony, I heard him calling for Tony.”

Sharon looks up at the Tower, and then at the firemen approaching it. “I don’t see Iron Man.”

Sam shifts his gaze up to the Tower, then drops it. “No, neither do I.” They don’t speak their fears, if this happened to Steve- what could have happened to an unarmed Stark?

“We think it’s an attack, some of the people on the ground have footage of an attack,” Sharon is saying as she ushers him to a squad car. “The police said they would bring you to the hospital. I’ll follow in a bit, I’m going to check out the situation here and then report back to headquarters.”

“We need more than the CIA,” he quips. She doesn’t take it as an insult and only grimaces in agreement.

One of the police officers opens the squad car door and Sam climbs into the passenger seat. Before he’s whisked away, he says, “Try and find Tony. He’s going to want to be there for Steve.”

Looking over her shoulder once, Sharon turns back to him and says, “Banner’s back, I’ll see what I can find out from him.” She squeezes Sam’s hand. Her voice quivers only slightly as she adds, “Stay with Steve, make sure they do whatever’s necessary, stay with him, okay?”

“Never gonna leave his side.” 

She smiles and then jogs away to the waiting police line. 

The police car pulls away, slowly progressing through the throngs of people, staring, watching, the spectacle of the Avengers Tower turn into a twisted mess of metal and chrome. It seems to take forever to get to the hospital but the police escort brings him directly to the triage bay where nurses and doctors frantically work on Steve. 

By the time Sam runs up to the emergency room, Steve’s not responding.

Steve’s bleeding out.

Steve’s blood is all over the floor.

Steve’s eyes are open and blank. 

Steve’s flatlining.


	3. Chapter 3

When he wakes up, and he does, he feels as if his legs have been loosed, as if the tendons and ligaments holding muscle and bone fray and fall apart. It’s then he realizes the pain radiating from his knees consumes him. He tries to get up, to force his body to listen to commands, but it is all for naught. There’s an unending pressure on his chest.

There’s a tube down his throat, gagging him, and he heaves against it. Someone, a strong hand, presses against both of his shoulders keeping him in place. He hears the sounds of beeps, blinks his eyes and sees the cluster of lamps hanging over his head. For an odd moment, he thinks someone might have caught him, and might be experimenting on him. He growls and jolts and then he hears the blurry figures above him say, “He’s coming out of it again.”

“I’ve already exceeded the recommended dosage by twice the amount,” someone says by his head.

“We need him to be unconscious. We can’t reconstruct his knees, find the fragments of the patella in the other tissues to put the kneecap back together if he’s going to keep moving like that. Now, get him sedated.”

“Gentle doctors allow me to address the Captain.”

A face swims over him and it takes more time than it should to hear the words, to recognize the face. He wants to say _Thor_ but his words are cut off and choked by the tubing.

“Captain, these good men and women are trying to help you. You need to remain still and quiet. Allow the medicines to work, can you do that?”

He’s not sure he wants to do that, he’s not sure what’s happened, or why he’s strapped down to an operating table in a surgical suite. He groans and Thor places the palm of his hand on Steve’s forehead. “Quiet now, Captain. They will give you another dose of the sleeping medication. Do not fight it. They fear for your health and safety, as do I.”

As pain grows, develops into a monster all its own, Steve want to allow the anesthesia to take him but one urgent thought pulls him toward alertness. He tries to speak around the thing in his throat, but it’s impossible. It only comes out garbled and ugly. 

“We need him out of it,” one of the doctors yells. “He’s moving and we need the site stationary.”

“Hard enough with the tissue healing around the bone shards-.” Someone else says.

“Calm, Captain, please. We are searching for the Man of Iron. We are looking through the rumble. I promise you we will recover him from the ruins of the Tower.”

He screams into the tube, but it’s impossible, they don’t understand, Tony’s not in the Tower. Tony’s nowhere near the Tower. He feels the sting of medicine as it travels up his arm again, they’ve dosed him. He needs to tell Thor, he needs to tell someone. Tony’s not in the rumble, the ruins of the Tower, Tony’s not dead. 

She has him.

No one can hear him. 

His cries are silenced. 

The drugs tug him under the tow and he hears in the far off distance Tony’s screams.

 **Natasha**  
She remembers a day when she stood, staring into another operating room, watching as doctors tried to save Nick Fury. She witnessed his death that day, or thought she did. One of the things spies do, with little regard, is emotional manipulation. It serves a spy well to have someone emotionally compromised; it doesn’t allow for rational thought or clean processes. It causes people to make mistakes. 

There’s no mistake about it now, though. Steve is fighting for his life. Even with the serum, his wounds are critical. Two sets of surgical staff work on him. One team has his chest pried open trying to repair a nicked aorta and lung puncture while the other team is slowly piecing together Steve’s kneecaps and putting them in the anatomically correct place, with hopes that the serum will stitch him back together again and make him functional.

They’ve been working on him for six hours. Thor, suited up like the surgical staff, has been in there for the last four, trying to keep Steve calm and still. Steve keeps waking up, no matter what they give him. He’s delirious with the pain and, luckily, it drags him under every fifteen or so minutes, giving the teams time to work without fighting him. 

Natasha tries not to be sentimental. It harms her clear thinking if she falls into the trap of it. When she first arrived with Clint in tow, Sam reported that things had gone to hell and back. It looked like a terrorist attack on the Tower, and right now, they have no idea why. The helicopter may have landed at the Tower, but the information is a mess, conflicting and confusing. Some of the newest information she heard includes the fact that Iron Man is an archvillain and tried to kill Captain America, which is all kinds of ridiculous. 

The fact that they haven’t been able to find Tony worries her. The fireball in the sky died down and the fire department was able to save a good portion of the Tower. It’s not livable, where they’ll stay is still in question. She doesn’t care, all she cares about is Steve and whether or not Tony survived the blast.

She can see by their expressions, her team is shocked, stilled, and overwhelmed. Most think that Tony didn’t survive, that under the wreckage they will find Tony. No one says anything. Tony hadn’t called his armor, but Bruce assures them that most probably had to do with the fact JARVIS was not functioning correctly. Tony had most of the JARVIS network down except for the isolated network out West and a portion of the East Coast JARVIS in his workshop.

“When do you think you can get into the Tower,” Natasha asks as Bruce walks back into the observation room. He’s had to leave the room several times. When she looks at him his eyes are shallow pits.

“Don’t know, still waiting to hear from the Chief of the fire department.”

“They’re still searching for survivors,” Sam says and she thinks he might be trying to provide hope, but it’s not working. He’s sitting where he can’t see them work on Steve. 

“Most of the people evacuated in the first ten minutes,” Clint says as he scrolls through his phone. He’s been in the corner of the room, scanning different websites trying to find any clues that will help them pin down the attacker.

“That’s good,” Natasha hears herself say, but she really couldn’t care, not now, not here. “We still need to get into the Tower. We need to find out what JARVIS knows.”

“He might not be much help,” Bruce says. “I’ve called into the systems, he’s not functioning properly.”

“Well, we need to find out what the hell happened,” Clint says through clenched teeth. 

She shares the same frustration and then her phone’s buzzing and she yanks it out of her pocket, hoping it might be Stark. It’s not. She connects and walks away from the window. “Pepper?”

“Natasha, we just landed at JFK, I’m on my way to the -.”

“Don’t go to the Tower, the police aren’t letting anyone in,” Natasha says. “Come to the hospital.”

“Is Tony okay?” Pepper says. “You found Tony, right?” 

Natasha’s not sure who called Pepper, it might have been Bruce or it could have been Hill. She has no idea. “We don’t know, not yet.”

“You still haven’t found him?” Pepper says and her voice quavers at the end, and she clears her throat to hold onto her sanity. “You still haven’t found him?”

“No, not yet.”

“What did Steve say?” Pepper asks and Natasha can hear the sounds of planes in the background. She must be on the tarmac, getting into a Stark Industries limo.

Natasha holds her breath, releases it, and then says, “We haven’t been able to talk with Steve yet, he’s still in surgery.”

“He was shot then?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, closing her eyes. She hates this part, she wonders if she should have looked for a different cover, a different life after they took out Hydra and the Helicarriers. “He’s still in surgery, Pepper, but once he’s out, we can ask him.”

“That might be too late,” Pepper says. “Tony might be hurt, he could be hurt.”

“Did Tony say anything? Anything about who shot Steve?” Natasha says and Clint looks up at her. 

“No, nothing. It sounded like he didn’t have a lot of time. He was stressed, but he didn’t tell me why or what was causing it.” 

Natasha slumps against the wall, watching as the surgeons wait for Steve to fall back into unconsciousness due to the pain again. Thor bends over Steve, speaking softly so that the intercom doesn’t pick up his words. 

“Natasha? Natasha?” Pepper says. “Are you okay?”

She almost denies it. “No, no I’m not.”

Pepper quiets and then says, “I’ll be there in a little over an hour. Don’t worry, he’ll pull through it, he’ll be all right.”

“Are you talking about Steve or Tony?”

“Both,” Pepper says.

Natasha smiles. “I’ll call you if I hear anything about Tony.”

“Thanks,” Pepper says and the line disconnects. 

Instead of going back to the window to watch the surgeons’ progress, Natasha sits on the couch in the observation room near where Clint perches on the side table. 

“You know there’s enough chairs to sit on.” 

“Yep, but none of them are in the corner of the room. I like to sit in the corner to get a full view of the room and protect my back.”

She doesn’t argue his point. “Anything from the reports on the Tower yet?”

“Nothing, but lots of crackpot ideas from the internet,” Clint says and holds up his phone. 

She scans the page of comments.

_All of our prayers for Captain America!_

_This is a terrorist attack, plain and simple. If New York would stop hosting the Avengers, then we wouldn’t have to worry about terrorists or aliens dropping by and causing all kinds of havoc._

_Where’s Iron Man? Captain America is nearly dead and where’s Tony Stark? Probably out banging the hottest thing in a skirt._

_Fuck the Avengers_

_CNN is reporting that Tony Stark is dead_

_CNN doesn’t fucking know what they are talking about. Tony Stark caused this just like he caused the attack on his own house in Malibu. He probably shot-_

She stops reading and curses under her breath in Russian. She hunches forward and Clint tucks the phone away. Sam’s next to her, his hand on her shoulder. She surprised ast his boldness. “Sharon’s finding out if we can go into the Tower tonight or if we have to wait until tomorrow.”

“It’s pretty late,” Natasha says. It’s nearly midnight. 

“Yeah, she’s trying to get us access.” 

Natasha smiles at Sam. “Us?”

He gives her that sardonic smile. “Well, I just thought-.”

“You’d like to move in since we’re in the middle of a major renovation, again?” Clint chimes in.

“Yeah, something like that,” Sam says with a shrug. “Plus, my boy needs someone to look after him.”

Natasha nods and bites back the pain and the warmth as they mix together in a conflict of emotions. Sam keeps his hand on her shoulder, waiting for her, but not pushing her. The door to the observation room opens and a group of three doctors enter. She hadn’t even noticed they’d finishes up. She tries her best to focus on them, take in their expressions, the cues that all people telegraph to the world but don’t know it. She finds she’s blind to everything. She needs to listen then and try to believe it will be all right.

One of the doctors, the lead surgeon, starts, “We’ve pieced together his kneecaps as best we could and, as we were operating, could see that the serum had started to knit the fragments together again. We can’t be sure how long it will take before he can walk again. It might be some time,” the doctor says. “Most people wouldn’t be in this position. Most would have lost their legs.”

Another of the doctors – a woman – pale eyes – Natasha cannot be sure. “He’s strong, we have a lot of hope. The thoracic team fixed the damage to his lungs and his aorta. It looks good, but we don’t know if we were able to do everything that needed to be done before the serum took hold and started stitching him back together.”

The last doctor, smaller, fiercer in features than the other two, says, “We have hope.”

“How much?” Bruce says and his words are clipped and his eyes averted as if looking at people might set him off.

The first doctor chimes in. “We’ve never dealt with an enhanced individual before. We did consult the doctors in Virginia at Georgetown, who worked on Captain America-.”

“Rogers, his name is Steve Rogers, he’s more than a suit,” Natasha snaps.

The doctor clears his throat and nods. “Captain Rogers, then, as I was saying, we consulted with medical staff who’ve treated him before. We’re following their protocols. All looks good, but he’s not out of the woods yet.”

“Why not?” Clint asks.

The woman jumps in and says, “Because there will be a lot of pain, sir. We can’t stop it for him and, as a doctor, the one thing I hate to see is my patient in the kind of pain he’ll experience in the next weeks. And I cannot even estimate how long it will take for him to heal and to not be in pain.”

Clint bows his head and looks to the side. Natasha touches him lightly on the arm and then asks, “Can we see him?”

All of them turn to look at Steve through the observation window, still laid out in the surgical suite. Thor bends over him, speaking to him in such low tones they cannot pick it up. Steve is aware. Blood spatters over the table, the surgical pads, and the floor. But it isn’t the smears of red everywhere that draw her attention, it is the tears. Simple tears staining Steve’s face draw her. 

When the nurse cleaning up the operating room ventures to wipe away the tears, Thor gently takes the cloth, thanks her, and turns to Steve. With soft and quiet words, he cleans Steve’s face, wiping the tears with soft strokes to calm him. 

Natasha walks away from the doctors as they drone on, and stares at Thor, taking care of their Captain. They have become a tactile team.

“I think we’re done here,” she says and pushes past the doctors and the rest of her team to find her way to the OR. She pushes through the door and heads to the surgical suite but the nurse who had been in with Steve stops her.

“Gotta suit up if you’re going in,” she says. Natasha’s too tired to explain to the woman and she brushes past her, but one of the doctors – the woman- rushes to her and catches her shoulder.

“Please wait for him to be brought out or suit up,” the doctor says and before she can protest, the doctor continues. “It’s a surgical suite, please. He might be a super soldier, but we don’t really know how stressed his system is at this point and whether or not it can protect him.”

When Natasha asks, Bruce concurs; no one knows enough about the serum. It takes some time for everyone to suit up. 

In the end, the nurses decide that only two of them can enter the room at a time. Natasha and Sam are elected. Sam seems positively humbled by the team’s confidence in him, but Natasha also sees it as a way to shore up Steve’s weakened state. Sam is someone Steve relies on as a backbone to support him.

Entering the room with Sam in tow, Natasha sees the bleary look to Steve as he lies amongst the wires and tubes. The monitors insistently beep and chirp. Thor is still there, holding his ground, not leaving even when the nurses frown at him. 

“Hey,” Natasha says and curls her hand around Steve’s, he looks worse than he did all those months ago after his fall into the Potomac. The breathing tube is out, but he has a nasal cannula. His breathing is labored, harsh and she wonders if it was a good idea to take him off of a respirator so soon after surgery.

He opens his mouth as if to talk, but the pain proceeds him, and he cringes and she squeezes his hand in hers. “Sleep, Steve, we’ll take care of everything. You need to rest.”

Sam holds his hand on Steve as if to impart a certain amount of assurance and security all at once.

Attempting to speak again, Steve licks his lips, gulps the air, and then mouths a word.

“Shush,” Natasha says and glances up at Sam.

“Hey man, do what the lady asks and rest,” Sam says.

He growls out a sound and the agony of his trial vibrates through her. “T-to-.”

“Yeah, man, we’re looking for him. Don’t worry, we got it.”

“N-na-.” 

“Shush,” Natasha says, “We’re looking for Tony. We’ll find him. The firemen are looking in the Tower-.”

Steve’s eyes go wild and he shakes his head so violently that he groans against the pain it causes. “N-na, no-.”

“What is it, Steve?” Natasha asks and she knows something horrible is wrong, something that throws Steve into a well of fear. 

“To-.”

“Tony?”

“Yea-. To-tonee.” He coughs and tears well up in his eyes. The nurses hover close.

“Tony? We’re looking for him in the Tower.”

“Na-t-.” His eyes roll in his sockets and she can see the exact moment when the darkness funnels around him and he succumbs to it.

“Nat,” Clint says as he peers in the door.

She turns from an unconscious Steve as the nurses go into a flurry of activity around him. “What?”

“You’re gonna wanna see this,” Clint says and he shows her the phone.

Tugging of the scrubs and leaving Sam behind, she hurries to join Clint out in the hallway. “What’s going on now?”

“We got a roof top camera, evidently it’s a cool thing to spy on the Avengers, but this is worse,” Clint says and the rest of the team gather around him. “This came in my email. You probably all got one, too.” He hits the play arrow and they watch as Tony walks out of the observation deck surrounded by armed men and a woman with magenta pink hair. He gets into the helicopter and it takes off.

“Okay, that confirms it, Tony’s not in the Tower, he’s been kidnapped,” Natasha says.

“That’s not the bad news,” Clint says and hits the other video file. “Sorry for this but, it’s explicit.”

It’s an image of Steve from the back, he’s chained to the window frame, naked. There’s no sound at all. Tony holds a cat of nine tails in his hand and proceeds to strike Steve several times. Natasha jumps at the first slash, and Clint turns his face so he doesn’t have to watch it again. After several swats, Tony considers the weight of the whip and then exchanges it for wooden paddle. She watches the video stream with critical eyes. She doesn’t flinch, she keeps her emotions neutral as she watches Tony starts to fuck Steve.

“Turn it off,” she says before it finishes. “What the hell is the point of that?”

“Well, the person who hacked JARVIS got this, and is threatening to put it on the internet if we don’t comply.” Bruce has walked away again, but Thor stays close. “It’s that crazy chick, Erica. She’s claiming to be the Red Skull’s daughter and she says she has all kinds of surveillance video of the two of them together that’s like this.”

“Okay,” Natasha isn’t going to judge. Who is she to judge? “So what does she want?”

“She wants us to play the video of Tony leaving via the copter and then show the copter firing on the building. She wants everyone to know that Iron Man killed Captain America.”

“She wants Tony painted as the villain.”

“To what end?” Thor asks.

With Tony as the villain, the world would turn on him, hate him for killing Captain America, the golden boy. “There will be no safe place for him. She’ll have him all to herself.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the tags for warnings have changed.

In his dreams, Tony cradles him, holds him as the pain shudders through his body. This isn’t the pleasurable pain, the pain that heightens his desire or arousal for Tony, it’s a pain that elicits emotions of agony and despair. He finds a certain comfort in Tony’s presence, in his closeness. In this he knows he is loved and cared for, but the pain continues. Even reaching out and hoping for Tony does not stop it. He claws his way through it like it’s the barbed wire he’d once endured during boot camp training and his body is too frail, and too weak to navigate it.

Yet, Tony remains a constant, keeping vigil in his dreams. He speaks of soothing words, of cabins by the lake, of island getaways, of a time they will be together forever. It soothes Steve, but never truly chases the pain away. When he asks Tony to help him, to find out why there is always pain, the specter of his love dissipates and he’s left alone and fragile against the impending nightmares.

The night terrors come like a march of soldiers, one by one with thick boots and heavy steps, stomping down on his rest and trampling any hope he may have had. He feels more like his old self, skinny, sickly, and helpless. He wonders if he ever felt comfortable in his serum made body.

“Nah, Stevie, you didn’t, don’t know why you’d think it’s for you.”

He turns and there’s Bucky, standing at his door at the tenements in Brooklyn. He can see the laundry fluttering on the lines in the breeze, and hear children laughing in the distance. The place looks and smells different; it’s seventy odd years ago and it smells like home – or what used to be home. Bucky is smiling, that half sardonic grin he always gives Steve when he’s trying to break something difficult to him. 

Except it isn’t Bucky.

He has a metal arm.

“Bucky?”

He pushes past Steve into the apartment. He has a thick black mask over his face, now, and smears of black ink around his eyes. “Stevie, you gotta realize the truth. You know, this charade’s gotta end.”

“End? What? Bucky, what’s going on?” 

Bucky points to Steve with a gesture to encompass his whole body. Steve looks down and he’s no longer the supped up serum induced Captain America, but thin Steve Rogers. He pads down his chest, his arm. He’s cold, colder than the ice ever felt.

“See, this is who you are, who the world should really see you as,” Bucky says and the mask is gone, but the metal arm remains. “This little puny thing, that keeps getting into trouble. All the damned time. I gotta get you out. This is who you are.”

“Doesn’t matter, Bucky, come home.”

He laughs. It’s cruel and hurts Steve’s ears. “Come home? To what? To you fucking Stark, or no, I should put it the other way. To Stark fucking you,” Bucky grins. “You like to take it up the ass, Captain?”

He startles at Bucky’s words and looks around because they are no longer in the old apartment in Brooklyn, but in the playroom on the Tower. “Bucky, please.” This isn’t right, Bucky would never be cruel or hurtful. Bucky always understood. He loved Bucky.

“Please, what?” Bucky says and has a whip in his hands. “Maybe we could have tried this. I didn’t know you liked it hard.”

“Bucky,” Steve says and his face is too warm but his hands are like ice. 

“You like to be hurt?” Bucky screams and his face is abruptly inches from Steve’s. “Do you? Do you like it hard?”

“Bucky, you don-.”

The metal arm moves and Steve tries to duck to get out of the way, but in dreams things are not the way they seem and cannot be predicted. The metal fingers seize his throat and clutch, squeezing. He cannot take a breath, he’s choking. 

“Like that Stevie, do ya?”

He scratches at Bucky’s hands, but he does no harm to the metal fingers digging into his flesh. His throat collapses and his vision dims. He spits up.

“Steve, Steve.”

A hand, softer, gentler, than the mechanical one, touches his forehead and he opens his eyes to find Pepper standing next to the bed with her hand cupping his head. 

“Steve, shush,” Pepper says and her eyes are not only kind and sweet, but marked with worry. 

“Pepper?” He squints and closes his eyes for a moment. They hurt, everything hurts. “Pepper.” Even to his own ears his voice sounds exhausted with too little strength, rasping and dry.

“It’s only be a few hours since your surgery.”

“Tony?” Steve asks and he wonders where Tony might be. Why isn’t he with Steve? Why did Steve have surgery? What’s wrong? He brings his hand up and spots the intravenous line hooked up to the back of his hand. More importantly, he notices the size of his hands, his arms. He’s not been reduced to his pre-serum form. What’s wrong then? “Tony?”

“I don’t know, Steve, do you remember what happened?”

Steve shakes his head but at the same time the events swim into his head like sharks circling their bloodied prey. The horror wells up and he coughs and curls up as the pain streaks through his chest, and his legs. He can’t move his legs since they are bound in some kind of metal skeletal structure that terrifies him. 

Pepper presses a hand to his shoulder to steady him, and stop him from moving. “Don’t, Steve, it’s okay. You’ll be okay. Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

He nods before he says, “Not in the Tower-.”

“We know, Steve, someone took Tony.”

“Erica,” he mouths but the sound doesn’t come out, it’s muffled. No, her name wasn’t Erica. She’d said something else. “Sinthea Schmidt?”

“We know,” Pepper says. “Bruce and Jane are working on JARVIS. They’re trying to get him functional.”

The world loops in and out and he feels like his legs are on fire. He hates this part; he’s never told anyone. Not the doctors after he first stepped out of the pod, not Howard when he did his tests, not Fury or the SHIELD medical staff, or Tony. Healing hurts, his accelerated rate feels like a thousand bugs crawling under his skin, feels like fire ants biting and chewing at his flesh, his organs, and his nerves. He pants as the pain burns through him.

She holds his hand, and he’s grateful for the touch. It distracts from the healing. Pepper talks to him. He doesn’t hear her. But the pain is brutal and he only listens to his heart beating, the fire ants devouring him, and Tony screaming far in the distance.

 **Tony**  
Waking doesn’t come all at once. It’s a process of stages that jar and tumble in his head like marbles clinking against one another in a game chalked on the sidewalk. He shifts and immediately realizes his wrists are tied, no make that chained, above his head. 

_Well, that’s clichéd_.

He blinks and his eyes water. The light doesn’t illuminate the room very well, he cannot figure out how large the room is or its dimensions. He cannot see any windows. He tugs the chains but they’re not moving. He can’t even see the ceiling. He’s cold and has lost his shirt along the way. He tries to call a suit, any suit, but he’s not sure the armor could get to him where ever he is, or even if JARVIS and the suit network is even functioning at this time. He knows JARVIS isn’t working; he’d left him half-cocked and letting in anyone thinking they were pizza delivery men.

His laugh is bitter and tastes like bile.

But then it doesn’t matter, in the end. Tony slumps down in his chains, but they give only a little bit. For too long he’s gambled and played the game. He nearly lost Pepper several times, and now he’s lost Steve. He swallows back the loss, trying not to allow the images to batter him like a ram to the gut, but it’s impossible. Seeing Steve laid out on the black tiled floor of the Observation deck with blood pooling around him, his body wrecked, his legs mere parodies, Tony will never be free of those memories. This is his fault, he brought Erica or Sin or whatever the hell her name is to the Tower. He introduced her to Steve.

“All this time,” he whispers. Was her end game to get to Steve? To kill him? She’d said it wasn’t all about Steve, that it was about Tony. But he doubts that, her viciousness when killing Steve had vengeance written all over it. If she’s Red Skull’s daughter as she claims to be, then killing Steve would be her priority. Tony is only secondary fodder. 

Why not kill him, too?

“It would be a mercy,” he says and wants to weep. He wonders where his tears disappeared, why isn’t he sobbing, crying out for Steve? He’s a cold, son of a bitch, and he doesn’t care. “That’s not true.” He loves – loved – Steve more than anything in this world. Steve became more than a partner, maybe more than a lover. If there had been a thing called soul mates, Steve would have been Tony’s.

He hopes, some small part of him, that Steve would have thought the same way, too.

As he hangs in his chains, chains linked up to an unseen ceiling, he tries to figure out how long it has been. His mind keeps circling, around Steve’s death. It’s been how many hours After Steve (AS). He won’t survive without him, even if he lived a thousand years more – what breathed and moved and functioned would be little less than a shell. He’s dead inside and he knows that’s why he cannot cry. 

He bows his head and closes his eyes trying to think of Steve, trying not to allow the memories to fade into the blackness surrounding him. As if on cue, something flickers. He opens his eyes and finds several computer screens strung up around him. They seem to materialize out of the darkness like ghouls. The blue light from the screens is eerie and foreboding.

“Another cliché,” he says and hypothesizes there’s a villain how to book somewhere. 

Images materialize on the screens and he cringes, flinches as the sounds confront him. It echoes like a remembered dream with half-truths of a mocking reality. His own words, his own voice assaults him. 

_“Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you?”_

The words are repeated over and again as the screen switches and changes and he watches as the violation of their privacy is displayed on the monitors. Different angles, angles and images that heave and roil in his gut. 

_“Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you?”_

He gags as he watches the recording, as his hand pushes into Steve, and he hears the little choked whimpers Steve made, that at once sounded so intriguing, so arousing, and now only curdles and churns harshly in his stomach like he drank down poison.

_“Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you?”_

The display is obscene, not for his interaction with Steve – they are consenting, loving adults, but the invasion of their privacy, their acts of love to be pirated and stolen. He chokes back the fear, the revulsion.

The display changes and Steve’s bucking hard on the large dildo that Tony invented for him. 

_”How would you like for me to fuck you in front of the windows? How would you like for me to fuck you in front of the windows? How would you like for me to fuck you in front of the windows? Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”_

The echoes bounce off of the walls and amplify in the lightless room. 

The intent, their love scene is mangled and ugly. He cannot stand to watch, and he closes his eyes but the words ricochet in his brain and he cannot escape the truths. He feels like he’s on trial, like this is a court and he’s the defendant.

From his left he hears the creak of a door and he turns to discover two figures standing in the light streaming in from the corridor. It looks like they might be underground. He tries to make out details, but the door’s slammed shut again and his two captors remain. He turns his head, stares not at the display of him fucking Steve against the windows, but to the floor.

“Nice, wouldn’t you say?” Sinthea says and she has a riding crop in her hand. He’s keenly aware that he’s been stripped of his shirt, and he’s only wearing his jeans; his feet are bare. He cannot see the second person, the person remains in the dark. “I said, nice, wouldn’t you say?”

He decides the best strategy here is to not answer. 

She slaps him with a light tap of the riding crop against his ass. It stings but doesn’t hurt. He’s clothed there. She’s wearing elbow high leather gloves, a suit that reminds him of Black Widow’s wear, and her pink hair shines oddly purple in the blue light from the computers. “Try again, shall we? I said, nice, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not sure what you’re talking about?” Tony says and adjusts his wrists in the chains. 

She laughs and it rings in the room with an innocence she does not possess. “That’s cute, that’s good. I like you, you know that?”

“That? That surprises me, but, you know, this isn’t the first time I’ve been hooked up with a lunatic-.”

The riding crop strikes against his knees – and this time it hitches his breath and he curses low in his throat. This bitch has something against functioning knees. As soon as he thinks it he regrets the thought, because it only brings up Steve writhing on the floor, trying to gulp down his pain, trying to spare Tony from knowing how much the bullets crippling him hurt.

“Well, would you like to watch the entire thing? All of the footage?” Sinthea says. “I have it all.”

He doubts that – he knows for a fact that he never taped any of his and Steve’s play scenes. That it could only have happened when JARVIS had been hacked, by her, crazy bitch. There’s no way she has more than a few hours. 

“How about this,” she says and stops leaning close to his ear. “Would you like to see this?”

The scene shifts from the play room to Tony’s bedroom. Steve is kissing him, his nipples and saying, ““I missed everything about you. So much, so much.”

This was filmed in his _bedroom_ for Christ’s sakes – after he’d turned off JARVIS, after the whole incident with the suit going haywire. This was an intimate, love affirming moment for them.

“You bitch, you fucking bitch,” Tony growls and lurches in his chains. The second person who entered the room moves into the light for only a moment, before she holds up her hand with the riding crop and stays him. He settles back into the shadows.

“Okay, perhaps you’d like this?” She’s circling him, flicking the riding crop in her hands.

The recording changes and turns into the Steve trying desperately to outrun the armor as it tries to attack and kill him. Over it, instead of his words of fear and worry Tony yelled at the time, he hears the words – 

_“Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you? Do you want me to fist you? Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”_

He bows his head and tries not to think of how everything he’s had with Steve has been violated, desecrated by this bitch. 

“It’s an amazing thing what can be done with a little bit of video footage. I’ve been watching you for a while and all of this just fell in my lap,” she says. “Do you like it when he subs for you? The late great Captain America? A fucking submissive?” She whips the riding crop and it strikes the small of his back, slicing a line of red fire against his bare skin. 

He tries not to react, but it’s impossible and he hisses and goes to his toes. She places a cold leathered hand on the wound and traces it. “Look at how beautiful you mark? Did he mark very well? I bet it wasn’t very satisfying. Could never mark him so it stayed. Hard to deal with, huh?”

“This little walk down memory lane has been brought to you by the crazy ass Nazi bitch-.”

She spins him on his chains and grabs hold of his chin, twisting it. “How do you not know that calling me a Nazi is not an insult? How can you not understand that my father attained the highest level of-.”

“No, no he didn’t. The Nazis disavowed any knowledge of Hydra and your lunatic father,” he snarls through her muzzle. It’s hard to form the words, but she loosens her hand just enough so that he can get it out. 

It earns him another lash of the crop and this one slashes from his shoulder to waist. His heart races and he shuts his eyes, trying to force the tears away. The sting of sweat streams down his back and feels like it sizzles in the wounds.

“You see what I have,” she says and the displays all change to different scenes showing Tony and Steve together in their most intimate. “You could stop me from uploading it to the internet. You can stop me easily enough.”

He doesn’t ask her how, he concentrates on the pain, it will be his way out of this mess, it will be his shining, crystalline reminder that she will get nothing. He’ll snap her neck, rip her fucking head off, and spit on her carcass when he’s down with her. 

“You can stop me from ruining the reputation of the great and dead Captain America, if you give me one thing.”

Still, he keeps quiet and the other person in the room steps forward.

“No, no need Rumlow.”

Tony remembers that Rumlow had been part of SHIELD, Steve had told him or maybe it had been Natasha at one time. Rumlow had been the head of a strike team. He’d also been Hydra. They’d thought he’d died in the Incident over the Potomac. He wears a helmet with a crossbones on it, and Tony cannot make out his face with his features obscured by the dark visor.

When Tony doesn’t answer, she hits him again, but this time with her fist to his jaw. It hurts, he has to admit that, but it seems like a weak second act considering the whipping with the riding crop. 

“That’s where he’s going to hit you,” she says, and then Rumlow bashes him in the jaw and it sends him into the shadows, taking him several minutes to reach alertness again. He spirals into a fog of nausea and half-awareness before he steadies the world. When he does she slashes out with the crop against his bare belly. 

He cannot stop himself from crying out. 

“Does he cry out when you hit him?” she asks. “Oh yes, I have a recording of that – we can watch it if you want?”

“Fuck you, bitch.”

She laughs and licks her lips, then pulls off a glove with her teeth, catching it with her free hand. Dropping it to the floor, she lines her finger along his cheek. “You have beautiful bone structure, do you know that?”

He clenches his teeth and bites away any retorts.

She pushes her finger into the whip wound on his stomach. He pants but holds back the scream. She lifts up her finger and shows him the blood and then she licks it off. “We could make a good pair. Would you be my submissive?” She whispers in his ear, her breath hot and heavy against him. “I’m going to make you my submissive.”

“I’d like to see you try,” he snaps out through gritted teeth.

“Never giving up, that’s nice, that’s good.” She backs away and lightly caresses the area of his chest where the arc reactor used to reside. “How did you do this?”

“I’m not giving you the tech for the arc reactor. Forget it.”

She chuckles. “That’s pedestrian, I don’t want that, sweet-thing.” She licks his cheek and he tries to decide if it’s worth kicking her. He’s answered when Rumlow activates an electrical prod. She raises her eyebrow and smiles at him. 

“I’m going to make you my submissive and you’re going to tell me everything. How did you get rid of it? Where’s the scar? What did you do, Tony Stark? What devil did you sell your soul to?”

“I’m going to fucking kill you and piss on your corpse, along with Crossbones here,” Tony says.

“You are going to give me the formula for Extremis, the corrected one, and then I am going to keep you chained up like my lap dog and peg you and let Rumlow fuck you anytime he wants.”

“Is that seriously, all you got? I mean, that’s a fairly good threat, but it’s also pretty predictable. Nothing else?”

She grabs his face again, this time with her bare hand and she digs her fingernails into his skin. “You are going to give me Extremis.”

“Good luck, sweetheart, because it ain’t happening.”

“You will give me the formula-.”

“Oh, oh, you couldn’t get into JARVIS to find it? You didn’t hack that part, you couldn’t find your way into the inner core of JARVIS,” Tony says and he feels the victor even though Steve’s dead and he’s following very soon.

“You will give me the formula-.”

“Why, so you can breathe fire? No, no one’s getting the formula. Ever – I destroye-.”

“No you didn’t. It’s in your fucking head. I want the formula. I need the formula.” She's hysterical with her screeching, her nails dig rivets into his flesh. “Give me the formula.”

“No.”

“You will do this for me, or I will give you one of these.” She steps back and puts her hand over her face, and the other hand grabs at her hair. She yanks away the netting, not unlike the kind he’s seen Natasha use for disguises, as she pulls the wig free.

Her skull – her face – she is scarred like the Red Skull, only a slight portion of her face remains whole. He almost feels sorry for her. 

“Like father, like daughter,” he says and knows it’s cruel. He pays for it with another two slashes of the whip. 

“The accident did this to me, and you will give me the formula. Or I will post all of these on the internet. Everyone will know that Captain America was a sham. His memory will be disgraced and you will watch it helplessly from this room.”

He looks at her, he thinks of Steve. He clenches his hands, and feels the ring – the ring Steve gave him on his hand – a vow and a promise. It gives him strength and power. It gives him courage.

“No.”

And the riding crop comes down again.


	5. Chapter 5

He becomes painfully aware of the fact that this time there is no escape. Chained, hung, and beaten there is no way out, no clever design or hope. He can’t get his hands free; as technical genius he needs a way to implement plans. There is no way without his hands. 

To eat away at any idea of hope, the bitch continually plays newsfeeds on the screens.

_Could Iron Man be the ultimate super villain? We’ll ask that question in our round table discussion later on Anderson 360._

_Did Iron Man betray Captain America? Has he gone over to the dark side, as they say? Why would he try and kill his fellow Avengers? Why Captain America? Some sources indicate that there had been some tension between the two leaders of the Avengers. Did Tony Stark take it too far?_

The screens play the attack on the Tower over and over. It kills Tony as he thinks of Steve, helpless on the Observation Deck, riddled with bullet holes, bleeding and suffering as they pulled Tony away. He hadn’t even been able to offer a moment of comfort. They laughed – the bitch’s goons laughed. He chokes back the bile and tries to rally, to find the strength that Captain America would surely have.

He cannot capture even a droplet of it. He aches all over, his skin feels like it’s been stretched too tight, dried, and tanned. She’s left him alone for some hours upon hours, he thinks it’s probably been more than a day. He’s pissed himself, but there’s no way anyone can physically hold their bladder for over 24 hours. He stinks, and he gags because of it. The warm urine stings where she’s lashed hard enough with the crop to split his pants legs and leave slice marks on his skin. 

When she comes again, and she does. He refuses her.

It isn’t pretty.

She’s angry and crazed. She takes her blood red nails and digs them into his cheekbone, scratching rivets down his flesh. His tears burn on his face, but he holds back while she’s here.

“If you do not give me what I’m seeking, you will die. Painfully.”

“Doesn’t matter, do your best.” He knows he’s baiting her, he doesn’t care. His bones feel lose as if they’re frayed rope.

“Oh, you will care, you will,” she says and turns from him. As she does the news reports speculating that Tony Stark is a lunatic bent on world domination flicks off the screens and a new scene appears. It is a reporter standing in from of a hospital in New York City.

_We’re about to hear from the Avengers’ leader, Captain America on the whereabouts and mental state of Iron Man a.k.a. Tony Stark._

He jolts in his chains at the words and she snickers. “Oh now, you are interested, now that you know he survived, he’s alive. Your play thing lives, how about that? I guess I get to think of different ways to make him suffer.”

“Fuck you,” Tony says and she still holds the riding crop but doesn’t swing it at him. 

She huffs out a short laugh, then she points at the screens and says, “Listen to your pathetic Captain begging for your life.”

The scene on the screen switches again, shifting to a hospital room. Thor and Sam are immediately recognizable. Thor stands to one side of a hospital bed, his hand strategically placed on the patient, while Sam takes up residence on the side as if a guarding the room. He’s standing at parade rest. 

The news reporter ushers the camera crew into the room. The camera wobbles but then steadies as it focuses on the occupant of the bed. Tony’s limbs go loose and he physically feels the world stutter to a halt as he lays eyes on Steve, wounded, hooked up to monitors and intravenous lines, with some kind of strange skeletal steel contraption around his legs, supporting him. He is very much alive.

The camera pans back to the reporter and she positions herself in front of Steve much to Tony’s chagrin. 

“Today, we will hear from Captain America himself, who had been seriously injured during the attack. Many assume that Iron Man, Tony Stark, may have had a psychotic break and attacked his fellow Avenger. It’s possible, thinking of all that Tony Stark has endured over the years since his abduction in Afghanistan.”

The screens run through a number of clips of Tony’s life including generic video footage of Afghanistan, the armor flying, the confrontation with Vanko during the race, and then the attack on Tony’s house in Malibu. All the while the reporter’s questioning Tony’s sanity.

The reporter turns to Steve and says, “First, Captain America, everyone is sending you prayers and positive thoughts.”

“Steve,” he says and his voice holds strength. “Just call me Steve, and thank you for all of the well wishes.” He tries to smile, but that’s more difficult and twists his face in a parody of the expression.

The reporter clears her throat and says, “We’d like to know how you’re doing, Captain?”

“I’m healing. The staff, the doctors and nurses, have been great. My team and friends are here helping.”

“That’s great, that’s good. The doctors say that your super soldier serum caused some issues during the surgery-.”

Instead of allowing her to finish, Thor interrupts and belays her question. “Please, Miss, you will not bring up memories of suffering to our good Captain.”

She pales considerably as she peers up at the god of thunder. Nodding, she says, “I’m sorry, Captain, everyone’s worried about you.”

“No harm,” he manages but Tony can see the fatigue creeping up. When seriously injured, Tony learned in the past that Steve requires sleep to regenerate and recuperate. “But I don’t think anyone should be worried about me. I’m going to be fine. I hope everyone will help in finding Tony, Iron Man.”

She turns back to the camera and states, “Iron Man, Tony Stark, has been missing since he left in a helicopter that attacked the Avengers Tower with Captain America as its primary target. That was over two days ago.”

Behind her Steve struggles in his bed, Thor bends down to help him as he sits up straighter.   
“No, you have it wrong.”

She turns and says, “Captain?”

“Tony didn’t leave willingly. He was forced. He’s been kidnapped, and he had nothing to do with attacking the Tower or trying to hurt me. I was attacked by a woman who goes by the alias Erica Holstein – she’s-.”

The screen turns off and then flickers a few times. This time he sees the private footage – the impact play and overlaid with him fucking Steve.

He keeps his expression cool, impassive. But then over the silent footage he hears the rest of Steve’s interview.

“Please, Tony Stark is a good man, a hero….” There’s a pause and then it starts again. Steve’s voice stays steady, but underneath, Tony hears the crack, the slight hiccup of desperation. “Please if there’s anyone out there who knows or has seen anything suspicious-.” It stops.

Sinthea spins on her heel and quirks an eyebrow. “Do you think I should call? I’ve seen quite a bit of suspicious activity. What do you think they will do when I release the footage of you fucking Captain America? How about when you put the cock dildo in his mouth and then put your fist in his ass?”

He stares at a central point on the screen over her head. 

“Take his pants off, he stinks,” she barks and the shadows move to reveal one of her soldiers, the one Tony dubbed Crossbones, steps forward with a knife. 

He can’t help the flinch when the man grabs the waist of his jeans and slits the knife along the seam. The man uses the blade efficiently and quickly, stripping Tony of his pants and his boxers. She only smirks at him.

“Get me some water, he needs to be rinsed down.” She walks up to him, her mouth close to his ear. “Don’t want those wounds to get infected, do we?” She runs a hand up his ribcage, scraping the ridges of welts along his side. “You scar prettily, do you know that?”

Her face – her Red Skull mutilated face hangs close to his and he snaps back, “Obviously better than you do.”

She seizes his throat and clenches down, nails stabbing into his trachea, until he’s gulping for air. “How about I make you look like this? How would your perfect little soldier like to have you fuck him then?”

She relents enough that he’s able to spit words out. “Not a perfect soldier, good man.”

“Oh isn’t that sweet,” she says and slaps him hard across the face. It leaves him with a ringing in his head and a flash of white in his vision. 

Two buckets of water are placed at her feet and she tilts her head as she studies him. “Not so brilliant now, are we?”

She doesn’t know, she doesn’t understand that she’s just given him the best reason to live – Steve is alive – healing, with his friends, his family. He’ll survive. What happens to Tony is secondary. When she leans down to pick up a bucket, he grabs the chains he hangs from and hoists his body up, kicking her square in her fucking ugly face. She topples backward and one of the buckets splashes over her. 

Growling and leaping to her feet, she scoops up the bucket and bashes it down on his head. He blacks out if only for a second and then hands are on him, holding his legs, keeping him from moving, roping his legs together. They anchor him to the floor, but he’s not sure how but he thinks there might be a drain grate nearby. Where the fuck is he?

She heaves in a breath, picks up the other bucket, and dumps it on him. It is frigid, ice, cold water. He grits his teeth and smiles at her.

“Refreshing.”

She hits him with the riding crop but it does nothing. She swings again and this time it impact his groin and he coughs and chokes at the pain. “Do that again, and I’ll make sure you never fuck anything again. Now, dear Iron Man, you will give me the information on Extremis or I will release the videos.”

“No.”

“You want to ruin the reputation of Captain America?”

“I want you to burn in hell, but since I don’t believe in hell that’s not going to happen. Ruining Captain America isn’t going to happen either,” he forces the words out. It’s a trial, and each syllable difficult to get out but worth every penny of energy it costs. “You can’t ruin Captain America, because Captain America is Steve Rogers – and you don’t know Steve Rogers. No one can ruin him. _No one._ ”

She picks up one of the buckets again and throws it at one of the multiple computer screens hanging off the wall. It cracks the screen and Crossbones shifts on his booted feet. “Sin,” Crossbones says.

“What?” she yells and the soldier raises his hands.

“Come on, why don’t you go, I’ll deal with him,” Crossbones says.

“I want him to suffer, I want that formula. Look at me Brock, look at me-.” Her eyes are wild and the crimson of her face like blood, beating and heated. Yet, Tony can hear the fear, the sorrow in her voice. He can almost feel sorry for her, if he thought of her as human, but he doesn’t. She cries, “I need that formula.”

“You’ll get it.” He helps her stand up again and walks her to the door. When the door opens, Tony tries to sneak a look, tries to figure out what underground bunker they might be hidden away in. He knows they must still be in the city. He recalls vague flashes of memory before they knocked him out. The helicopter flight hadn’t been long. The trip in the van had been halting and slow, almost like they’d been stuck in city traffic. But where the hell could they be? It looks like a fucking parking garage. He can’t tell.

When the door closes, Crossbones, stands against it for a minute, surveying Tony. Peeling off his jacket, he tosses it, and shows scarred skin under his tank top with strong muscles underneath. “I’m gonna tell you a story now, Mister Stark, I’m gonna tell you a story of how your boy went down. How he dropped to his knees in front of the world – you might have seen that part.” 

He takes off his helmet and Tony recognizes him from the news reports, though he’s terribly scarred as well. Burns across his face. Rumlow. “You don’t know what happened after. I bet he never told you what happened after?” Rumlow smiles, but there is no laughter. “Do you want to know, the whole story, Stark? Do want to know what Captain America did after I captured him. Do you want to know how he surrendered, what he said? How he begged?”

Tony doesn’t answer, keeps his eyes on the cracked screen. He lets the lies float around him like drift wood in the middle of the ocean, and he’s sinking, and he ignores the only lifeline around, because he won’t believe it. 

He believes in Captain America, but what’s more important, he believes in Steve Rogers. 

 

**Clint**  
Bunch of bull crap that’s what’s going down. He sucks at his teeth and there’s a groan from Hill, but he doesn’t care. This is a bunch of crap as far as he’s concerned. 

“I think it’s a shit ass plan,” Clint says and screws up his face as Hill only raises her eyebrow. They’ve been sitting for hours, trying to find Stark to no avail. He needs to get out and move. They need to ensure that video never sees the light of day. “Seriously, this is not the way to go.”

“And what’s your strategy?” Hill says and she’s leaning on the lab bench, challenging him, warning him. 

“This isn’t SHIELD, this isn’t your gig,” Clint says. There’s no way anyone can intimidate him, not anymore, not after having his brain scrambled by a lunatic parading around as a god.

“I work for Stark Industries now,” Hill says, she doesn’t waver at all.

“And this is Avengers’ business, not-.”

“I beg to differ, this is about Tony Stark, not just the Avengers,” Potts says as she enters the the workshop in the Tower; the fire department finally allowed them back into the building. The top floors, the living areas, are still off limits, but the floors directly below the Avengers’ quarters have been opened to them. Bruce and Jane Foster are holed up in the corner of Stark’s workshop, attempting to get JARVIS to do something other than insist there’s pizza delivery men at the door.

“What? We need to get out there and find Stark” Clint jumps up from his seat, he’s been hunched over, secluded for too long. He’s blinded by the shades and doubts of the last couple of days “The longer we wait, the longer that lunatic can do something to him. Or release the freaking video.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I get that?” Potts says and she vibrating with anger. Her cheeks redden. “He’s Tony, he’s been – he’s been my friend forever.”

“And that lunatic that shot up Steve has him. How the hell long do we think he can last? He’s not a super soldier,” Clint says. “She’s got no limits, we’ve seen that.”

Potts leans into his personal space, her eyes strident and fearless. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I’ve been through this before? What the hell do you think it was like when he was taken in Afghanistan?”

Hill steps between them. “We’ll find him, Pepper. It’s not going to go down like that.”

Potts doesn’t flinch. “You can’t say that. You don’t know that. No one knows what’s going to happen. We thought she was safe, not a lunatic. We did the background checks.”

“Background checks verified by SHIELD, a SHIELD infiltrated to the highest levels by Hydra. This isn’t your fault,” Hill says. Somehow Hill portrays the ability to loom over people.

Potts doesn’t back down. “Isn’t it?” 

Taking her hand, Hill leads her over to a quiet part of the workshop and leans in close, speaking softly enough that Clint cannot pick up the details. From his position he observes that whatever Hill says soothes Potts enough that she’s nodding and wiping at her eyes.

“We’ve identified the missiles, but they’re standard old school Stark Industry. Don’t ask where she got her hands on them. Must have been from the black market,” Natasha says as she walks the workshop, a Stark tablet in her hands.

“Especially since we don’t manufacture weapons anymore,” Potts adds. She’s pulled herself back together quickly.

Hill shakes her head. “That shouldn’t be hard to trace. Old Stark weapons are getting more difficult to find. I’ll put some feelers out, see if we can trace the source.”

“I’ll do what I can as well,” Natasha says and touches Clint lightly on the shoulder. It’s a warming, stabilizing presence. They’ve learned each other’s cues, but it’s not difficult to figure out that this whole shitty experience is doing a jig in Clint’s brain. He doesn’t like mind games, especially when they hurt the people he calls family.

“How about the helicopter. Any ideas on tracing that?” Clint asks and as he settles into his seat, lounging back as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. He knows he’s not fooling anyone in the room.

“Not yet, but we don’t have the whole of SHIELD at our disposal, so it’ll take some time.”

Everyone in the room even as they discuss the current leads and progress keeps shifting their attention to Jane and Bruce as the consoles flash and the holographic images of data transform and change in the stream overhead. 

“I have brought good tidings and important information from our good Captain,” Thor says. It surprises Clint to find that Thor looks worn, tired by the experience, but then he’s been at Steve’s side most of the last two days. Helping him keep calm and steady as the doctors work to save his knees and legs. When Jane arrived at his behest he’d barely had a moment with her. Jane’s face lights up and softens at the same time when she sees him. “Our good Captain has reported that the good Man of Iron noted his progress and repair for his Artificial Intelligence on his Stark Tablet. I have retrieved it from the penthouse level.”

“The penthouse level is off limits” Jane says as she stands and greets Thor with a hop up to kiss him on the cheek.

“Yes, yes it is,” Thor answers, but he leaves no room for questions. “It may assist in the repair of the Artificial Intelligence.”

She takes it from him and smiles. “It may, it may.”

While Jane consults the tablet with Bruce peering over her shoulder and offering commentary, Clint turns back to Thor. “How’s Steve?”

“Our good Captain is resting now, finally.” The sound of near defeat laces his voice, his shoulders slump. “I am sorry, it has been but a difficult few days. The Son of Wil stays with him to watch over and guard him as he sleeps.”

“Good, good, I’m still worried about that news report and letting it out that Steve’s alive,” Clint says and scratches at his beard. He hasn’t been back to his apartment in days. None of them have. They’re all pretty rank when it comes to bathing and personal hygiene at this time. 

“If our profile works, she’ll make a mistake now,” Natasha says. “She’s unstable and it’ll rile her up. She might make a move to get to Steve.”

“Or kill Tony,” Potts says and her disapproval is apparent.

“She’s not going to do that,” Natasha says and the command, the assurance in her voice stops everyone in the room. “She wants something from Tony. Steve was revenge. Steve told us she’s Schmidt’s daughter somehow, so he’s simple revenge. Tony, well, he’s got something she couldn’t find when she was hacking JARVIS.”

“Something only Tony would know,” Potts adds.

“Something he would find so dangerous he either won’t store it digitally, or stores it so deeply she couldn’t get her hands on it,” Natasha says.

“I’m currently working on trying to figure out what she did on her devices while at Stark Industries,” Jane chimes in. Clint cannot catch what she’s staring at on the screen, but around her the flurry of data continues to fall. “She did a lot to cover up her work, but I’m teasing it apart – we might have something soon but I can’t tell you when.”

He gags a little at the time. What will that mean to Stark? What the hell does she want with Stark? “What does she want with Stark?” he asks.

Natasha, Potts, Bruce pipe up. But it is Jane who answers again. “We’re finding out that she spent a lot of time looking into Tony’s research on-.”

“A.I.?” Clint asks.

Bruce frowns. “A lot, figuring out how it worked. But she also looked into the creation of Iron Man, the Vanko incident, the Mandarian attack. But-.”

“But she couldn’t get into that inner circle of JARVIS’ security. There are some things she was blind to,” Jane says. 

“She could have been searching for information on weapons, arc reactors-,” Bruce says. 

Potts shakes her head and says, “Extremis.” 

They all fall silent. Extremis. He stands up and walks over to the circle where the holographic images continue their cascade around Jane and Bruce. He can’t make heads or tails of it, but he needs to do something, anything. 

“We need to find him,” Potts says. “Now.”

“The Man of Iron-.”

“Tony, honey, Tony,” Jane says and runs a hand down Thor’s forearm.

He smiles and nods, “We must search for him.”

“I’ve been trying to locate him using the transponders Tony has implanted under his dermis,” Bruce says and squints at the screen.

“Dermis?” Clint blanches, that does not sound pleasant.

“Tony implanted a network of transponders under his skin to call the suit to him.”

“Why isn’t he calling it to him now?” Clint asks.

“He might have tried, but JARVIS isn’t working and I think it really depends on JARVIS and the armor. Most of the armor Tony still has isn’t upgraded to respond.” Bruce scrolls through the data. “The transponder should work though, like a beacon if JARVIS is working. But it isn’t working like I hoped.”

On the projected holographic screen a point on a map keeps flashing. 

Natasha steps up to stand beside Bruce, they are on the other side of the transparent projected screen. “Where is that?”

Clint steps over to the other side. “That can’t be right.”

“No, it can’t.”

“Or it is, and the bitch has been here all along.” Clint fists his hands. Forget the freaking bow and arrow, he wants to get his hands on her, he wants to pound her until she bleeds.

“Here?” Potts asks

“The data points to the Tower. According to the data received. If I’ve fixed JARVIS correctly, and he’s not mistaking electrical interference for the transponder then” Bruce says and throws his arms out so that the screen encompasses a large swath of the workshop. “Tony’s in a sub-basement of the Tower.”


	6. Chapter 6

Steve tells himself it hasn’t been long, that Tony is a survivor, that with the Avengers on his side, Tony will come home to him safe and sound. He knows it is a lie. He has a tendency to do that – to lie to himself. It helps him cope – or that’s what one of the therapists once said to him long ago when he first woke up. He wonders if the therapist had been a SHIELD doctor or an agent of Hydra.

Sam has been sitting with him since Thor left and, while he’s grateful, he’s also anxious. He’d like Sam to take a break, if only for a little while so that Steve could request more information from the nurses. Right now, Sam and the whole crew have kept him in the relative dark about the media coverage and other developments. They aren’t being cruel, Steve knows this; they are only trying to protect him. Their good intentions only seed more worry, more concern. He can’t sleep, or rest, knowing that they haven’t a clue where Tony might be. 

When Sam’s phone vibrates, Steve urges him to take it. Stepping out of the room, Sam says, “Hello.” And the rest of the conversation fades into the distance. Steve turns his attention to figuring out how to turn on the television perched on the wall opposite the bed. In the end he calls the nurse who appears almost instantly.

“Would it be possible to get the news station on?” Steve points to the television.

The nurse eyes it as if it might be her mortal enemy and then presses her thin lips together. Finally, she shakes her head. “I’m afraid not, Captain, I’m under strict orders to ensure you stay calm, rest, and don’t try anything stupid.”

“Those are Clint’s words and he’s not my doctor, I want to see the news,” Steve says and the force in his voice – his Captain America command voice - conceals the ache in his bones, in his chest, in his heart. He should be sleeping, he knows this. It is the best way to recuperate quickly, but the unease of not knowing where Tony is, or what’s happening in the search for him is a recipe for insomnia. 

“I understand your need to know what’s happening, but there’s nothing you can do, at the moment. I suggest you rest, Captain.” 

He thinks it’s ludicrous that she’s wearing scrubs with little kittens on it, when she’s being a tyrant to him. 

“I’m not going to rest until I find out-.” He stops, not because he wants to but because he has to, a slight shift in position send bolts of lightning up his legs from the injured knee caps. He grits his teeth against the waves of pain. 

“Oh Captain,” the nurse says, she holds his shoulder, pats him soothingly, and he feels ashamed to cause her such distress. She’s probably someone’s grandmother. 

“I’m sorry – I just,” he says and can’t manage to finish because he really does need to rest, and the pain keeps coming like a speeding train, its engine on a track to destruction. He’s not been hurt this bad in ages, maybe since the Potomac, and he doesn’t need to think about that right now.

“I-I-I,” the nurse mutters and looks around at the monitors as if she’s completely lost as to what to do to relieve him. She pats him lightly, like he’s a good natured dog.

She’s saved when Sharon walks into the room. “Steve.”

He nods to her and lays his head against the cushions, intently focused on calming his nerves and relaxing the muscles in his legs. Her presence helps as she smiles and offers him an honest, open expression. 

“Sharon,” he says and reaches out a hand to her. He relaxes and with his release of tension, the pain abates if only for a moment. The nurse checks him once more and then excuses herself.

Sharon grasps his hand and hangs on, not letting go of him. “How are you doing?”

“Better,” he says and he’s surprised at how weak his voice actually sounds.

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” Sharon says, and when he gives her a querulous look, she explains. “I was there when the Hulk, Doctor Banner, rescued you from the Tower.”

“Oh, oh,” Steve says and half smiles even as he searches his memory. “I don’t remember.”

“Not a surprise,” she says and her words are kind as she cups his hand in both of hers. “I wanted to tell you that we found the helicopter.”

“You did?” Steve says and he sits up, even though it costs him and he forces himself not to flinch.

“It wasn’t far. They must have transferred Tony from the helicopter to a waiting vehicle. We’re still working to find any surveillance tapes from the area.”

“How did she get out of custody?” he asks.

“We’re still working on that little tidbit. But it seems like General Talbot has some double agents in his detail. We’re rooting them out now.” Sharon studies him and he watches as her critical eye considers the evidence. “We’ll find Tony.”

“My team’s searching for him,” Steve says and he doesn’t know why he feels defensive, but this is the same government that allowed Red Skull’s daughter to escape in the first place, this is the same government with a shadow government – Hydra – embedded in it. He can’t trust this government, and he wonders how anyone can, how Sharon can.

“Listen, Steve,” Sharon says. “I know you’re worried, but we have this – both your team and mine. You just rest and get yourself healthy again.”

He lays back on the pillows, the ache in his chest feels only like distant stab wounds, while the pain in his legs comes more from the stitching together of bone, tendons, and ligament than any injuries. The fire is a constant burn into him, like a spear to his soul. It opens up the pain of loss, the loss of Tony, like a raw wound, scavenged and picked dry.

As he opens his mouth to answer her, Sam comes back into the room. Everything about him screams military, screams preparation for battle, for war. Steve diverts and his head hurts because he knows it’s bad. “What is it?”

“That was Natasha. They got a lead on Tony,” Sam says.

“And?” Steve shuffles a bit in the bed.

“It’s weird, they’re still debating. But from their information, from what they can glean from JARVIS, it looks like Tony’s in a sub-basement of the Tower.”

The possibilities ram through his brain like hot skewers, melting every other thought in their path. He feels like he’s in the middle of Tony’s lab, watching the cascade of data stream about him. It all falls into place. He watches the puzzles pieces and there’s only one thing to do.

He leans down and grips the metal skeletal structure attached to his legs to stabilize his knees. He shreds it, bending metal and joints as both Sharon and Sam protest.

“Steve,” Sharon says, trying to stall him.

“Stop it.” Sam grips his hands and holds him. “You’ll only hurt yourself. We got this.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Steve says. “It’s a trap. She had her hands on JARVIS, she’s done this to trap them. We have to stop them. Or they’re all dead.”

 **Tony**  
He chooses not to worry about the collar she snapped around his throat. Snapped is the wrong word, mainly because what’s around his neck is more like a dog’s choke chain than anything else. He can’t really move at all since they’ve moved him to standing on a stool on his tip toes. If he even tries to relax he chokes himself. He’s been like this for the last hour. His feet are strained; his toes are cramping. This does not bode well at all. The best thing to do, right now, is ignore it. 

Especially since crazy bitch prances back and forth in front of him doing the villain monologue about the wonderfulness of her crazy ass father. He hasn’t heard a word she’s said in the past twenty minutes. He’s keeping his mind on his hands.

His hands are still tied above his head, but now spread apart. He might be able to finagle a way to allow some give on the chain that’s around his neck like a noose if he can pull the chains holding his wrists closer together. There’s not a lot of give in the links though. He surmises each of the chains holding him must be secure to opposite sides of the wall while the chain around his neck locked above his head. He’s tries to slip his wrist and hand through the manacles but he can’t do it. There’s no leverage to try and dislocate his thumb in order to succeed. 

She’s gone into a sing song in front of him, bobbing back and forth like a pendulum. “They’re coming, they’re coming.” She giggles with a hackle that can only be described as half a crow’s crackle and a lunatic’s shriek. “Do you know? Hmm?” She hops up to look him in the eye, but she can’t quite make it since the stool is about six inches in height, giving him a total of nine inches on her. 

It doesn’t deter her from gloating. It’s a villain thing – to gloat. “It’s going to be so much fun.”

She backs away and then claps her hand. Someone must be monitoring them, because the screens flash on. First, he sees a few screen shots of the Tower blowing to pieces, and then a news shot of Steve in his hospital room.

“Everyone’s so worried about the Captain,” she says as she tilts her head to look at the screen. “Everyone’s crying and praying for him. No one gives a crap about you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he says and he instantly regrets it, because she still has the riding crop and he’s still naked, and she’s still bat shit crazy. He swallows down his scream when she whacks him against the thighs.

“Listen up, this is where you understand, this is where you get it into your head that I’m going to win this, and you’re going to lose.”

He thinks she might have forgotten her purpose. She hasn’t ask about Extremis in a while. She might just be focused on the thrill of torture. She’s new at torture, this much he can tell, because she doesn’t go at it slowly – she doesn’t torture psychologically, ratcheting up the fear and terror as the physical blows slowly gets worse. She only goes for the gut wrenching physical shit. He keeps quiet, watching her, flicking over to the screens as it settles on images of the Tower – inside the Tower.

“You see that?” She points to the screen. “That’s your Tower. The Tower controlled by your A.I. You think it’s a safe place, don’t you?” She mutters. “Your A.I.” Glee laces her voice. 

He doesn’t answer and when he refuses to give in she slashes the crop against his ass. He only grunts in response. The sting burns and he shakes his head trying to free himself of the constant ache.

“Safe, do you think you’re safe?” she asks. “Do you think they’re safe?” 

The screen changes to a shot _inside_ the Tower, again. Not only inside the Tower, but inside the _workshop_ , his workshop. He startles and he tries to cover it up, but he can’t and she notices.

She laughs. “Now, you’re getting it. And yes that’s a live shot. Look at all your friends, your team mates trying to figure out where you are. They will, very soon.”

Tony cannot help but focus on the screen, observing while his team mates discuss the possibilities of his imprisonment, what it means to have released the footage of Steve still alive, and then there’s a pause. And then they are all gathered around Bruce as he spreads his arms and the holographic display expands. There’s a beacon and Tony reads it, though the angle is off and it is difficult to discern. He manages to figure it out.

He cannot help the intake of air as he gasps. The steel against his throat burns and cuts into tender flesh. He’s in his own sub-basement. His fail-safe escape route. Jesus fucking Christ, she knows everything. He nearly topples off his tip toes; he wobbles and the noose tightens by a degree.

“See, now you know, we’re only moments away from them. Now why would I do that?” She smiles. It is a ruined expression in her red mutated skull. “Why?”

He doesn’t try to fathom the mind of the criminally insane, but now he needs to know. “I don’t-.”

“Ah, the great Tony Stark, confused? Why would you be confused?” She leans in and lays her head against his flank, almost lovingly as she cuddles into him. He hates the touch of her, and physically shivers. She only pets him softly, almost tenderly. “Watch. As I cause their destruction.”

On the screens there’s a general disagreement about the location, the beacon on the holographic display. Natasha’s on the phone, Jane and Bruce debate over the authenticity of the data. He struggles in the chains, trying to yank his arms together, but that’s impossible and it only serves to choke him a little more. 

“Stop it,” he coughs as he speaks. The chain is impossibly tight against his throat. It cuts into his flesh. “Stop.”

“Oh, you know, now, don’t you?” Nazi bitch says. “You finally understand. If I can take you from your Tower, only to bring you back in it that means that there’s more to what I did to JARVIS than a simple glitch or two. Now you know that the glitch was only the beginning, only the fun stuff, to hide all the bad stuff. And oh, how I like the bad stuff.”

He jerks against the chains and the screens suddenly go dark. It isn’t because the screens shut down; he hears his friends, his family. There are flashes and blasts; there are explosions and he picks out the telltale sounds of a Hulk transformation. He curses and when the witch giggles, he spits at her.

She pops up on the stool and clamps his face in her hands. She is millimeters from his face. “You can stop it all, you can put an end to their suffering. Give me the formula.”

He almost does. He wants to, he can’t have this happen. These are his family, his friends. He has never had anyone in this world like them. Everyone he loves is in that room – Bruce, Thor, Clint, Natasha, Pepper - everyone, outside of Steve. What the hell will become of Steve if everyone dies? He can’t kick or hit her. He’s defenseless. He only growls low in his throat and barks out, “Never.”

He wants to call a suit, but even though he could try, he can’t. There’s no suit capable, right now, of answering him. He wants to be callous about it, but he can’t. There’s no way out and he can hear the screams, the battle rages on the screen before him like some obscene video game. Yet he can’t see a thing in the blackness on the screen. The smash and yell of the Hulk overcomes all other sound. 

And then, like a miracle, it ends.

Silence, pervasion and encompassing. 

She whips around to the screen and waits. It’s only black. A glint of fire here and there on the black field shows that it is a live shot and they have not lost the feed. She stands frozen to the spot and Tony wishes he could use the moment to kick her in the head, but he can’t – he would only hang himself. 

Jumping down from the short step stool she taps on one of the screens. Nothing happens, the feed continues – nearly black with a scattering of tiny blinking fires here and there. 

“What? What’s going on?” In that instant, he hears Erica again – not the crazed Sinthea, but the young brash computer whiz, Erica. He can almost imagine her here with pink magenta hair and her tight Metallica t-shirt. “I don’t. Huh?” 

Distant, and indistinct, a rumbling quakes through the Tower.

She gazes up into the darkness of the cell. The Tower feels like its shuddering against an enormous stress. His chains clank and jitter in response. 

“What is that?” She blinks and then checks the screens again. He holds his breath, he knows that vibration, that thunderous quake. He’s felt it before, he’s been in the company of the monster. 

She scratches fingernails down her bald scalp, whining a high pitched shriek. “What’s going on?”

At that moment, the door swings open and Crossbones bursts in. “Sin, they got through the barrier.”

“How, I programmed that damned computer to-.”

“I am sorry it took me so long to override the malicious code, sir.” It’s coming through the speakers for the screens. He wants to cry when he hears the familiar voice. JARVIS’ announcement feeds his hope like manna from heaven. Yet, it also sets her off, throws her into a raging tantrum. 

“What did you do? What did you do?” she snarls at him. “Give me the equation, give me Extremis.” She whips him several times, the lashes are indiscriminate, and brutal. 

Crossbones hurries to her side, trying to stop her as she beats on his side with the riding crop. He tries not to flinch from the pain, but her arcs against his side causes him to topple off his toes, and he’s perilously close to choking. As he grapples to use his hands to grip the chains, small mutilated whimpers escape from him. 

“Shut the fuck up,” she screams and Tony’s not sure if she’s talking to him or to her goon. 

“Come on, Sin, we have to go,” Crossbones warns. “That fucking monster, the Hulk is on his way.” The room vibrates with his footfalls. “Time is fucking up.” He seizes her and hauls her away, but before she departs she yanks free and rushes back to Tony.

“See you in Hell,” she says and kicks the stool out from under him. 

Clutching the chains with his hands, he struggles against the tightening chain. It’s a doomed battle, he doesn’t have the upper body strength. He’s strong, fit, but not super human. He’s never been super human. He tells himself he can do it. He lies.

The chains slip. He feels the cool metal slide through his hands. 

He’s falling.

The chains sway under the vibrations of the monster coming to save him. The irony doesn’t escape him.

The noose constricts, compresses, narrows. His hands loosen their grip. The world throbs a beat around him, what little light there is recedes. The world is cut short, his words shut off.

“Stev-.”


	7. Chapter 7

His will, his protests, his drive to stand and rush to find Tony fail him; three days, even with the super soldier serum, isn’t enough to rebuild his destroyed knees. He tumbles out of bed, as Sam tries to catch him, as Sharon begs him to stay put. He slams head first against the tiles and there are monitors screaming and alarms going off all around his bed. The wires tangle around him, tubing pops and blood stains his arms, and Sam wraps his arms around Steve, trying to get him up without further damaging his legs.

“Come on man, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“No,” Steve says and he knows it’s ridiculous, that he will cause more harm than good, but his friends, his family they are in trouble. “We have to get there, warn them.”

“There are better ways than getting your skinny little ass out of a sick bed and crawling there,” Sam says and there’s a bevy of nurses surrounding them as Sharon takes to the phone. 

“What do you want me to say?” she asks as nurses bend down to help Sam recover Steve into the bed.

The metal support structure is defunct now, since Steve man-handled it; it’s twisted and torn apart. One of the nurses calls for a wire cutter while another asks Sam to hoist Steve back into the bed with hands under his arms as the rest of the team support Steve’s legs.

“Steve?” Sharon asks as she waits on the phone.

“Did you get Bruce on the phone,” Steve says through a gasp of pain as they try and reposition him on the bed without damaging the healing ligaments and tendons in his legs. 

“No, no one’s answering. I’m putting a call through to Maria Hill?” Sharon says and then turns from them to answer the phone. “Hi, Maria?”

Before Steve’s able to reply to her, she walks out of the room and the nurses buzz around him as Sam chastises him. 

“What do you think you’re doing? You cannot help anyone in this state. Get your ass back in bed and listen to the nice nurses,” Sam says and his voice is pitched to command, military and efficient.

It turns Steve’s ears red, he’s sure but he doesn’t back down. “I’m telling you they’re in trouble. Sharon said she can’t get them on the phone.” He pushes a nurse away that’s trying to connect a lead, but then he feels terrible about it, and apologizes. “I’m sorry, I just have to find out-.”

Sam holds up his hands and says, “We’ll do this Steve. We’re finding out. It might take more than a few seconds. We will warn them and we will get everyone to safety.”

“You don’t know that, that woman isn’t in her right mind,” he says. He’s not in his right mind. He’s never encountered such clear and cold cruelty, only with the Red Skull did he experience such dead eyes. “I’ve seen people like her before, Sam, she won’t stop.”

“I know, I know,” Sam says and the nurses have Steve hooked up to the monitors again, but the metal support structure is a loss and they are clipping it apart, trying to be careful of his tender flesh as it heals. He grunts a few times as they adjust his legs and each of them murmur a sorry, but he feels terrible that he’s put everyone through this trauma.

Sharon enters the room, a look on her face that speaks determination, resilience, and a little bit of pissed off. “I was able to contact Maria. She said that the workshop floor shut down and they could detect a possible attack, but they weren’t sure. With JARVIS partially out, they’re running on the lowest level of security surveillance.”

“An attack?” 

“Stay put, soldier,” Sam commands. “What information did you get?”

“Not much, but she was cut off and had to get off the phone ASAP, because of whatever’s taking place. I called in the local law enforcement. Hopefully, they can lend a hand.”

“Sam,” Steve says doubtful of their help and Sam nods.

“I’m going, now,” Sam says. “Stay with him, don’t let him out of that bed.”

“I won’t, be careful,” Sharon says and Sam disappears through the door. She turns to him. “Whatever’s happening there, we’ll take care of it.”

“I don’t doubt you’ll try, I just think that it’s beyond the average, everyday criminal. She came back to the Tower for a reason,” Steve says and throws his head back. The nightmare of those moments, when she shot his kneecaps out haunts him at the edge of his consciousness. “She did this on purpose. She wanted them to find Tony, because she’s got the place booby trapped.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s the only explanation. She’s a brilliant woman, according to my understanding of what she did for Stark Industries. She infiltrated Tony’s artificial intelligence. Just that fact alone should give us pause.” He sighs and the weight of worry presses further down onto his injured chest. He knows he’s not going to see Tony again, not his Tony. Never. “God damn it.”

“Captain,” Sharon says and her eyes are not unkind.

He blinks and tries to stem the tears. “I just have to know they’ll be all right.” _He’ll be all right, he’ll be all right_. He swallows down the fear, and it’s the Helicarrier over the Potomac and seeing Bucky all over again. The idea that he has to force himself to face something he doesn’t want to do constricts his chest, like a fist. “Sometimes, there’s some things I just don’t want to do.”

“But you have to get through this, Steve, there’s no other way.”

He nods and bites his lip. “Yeah, I know. It’s what I do.” Can Tony do it? Can Tony get through something he doesn’t want to do?

Over the course of waiting for word, he feels as if he’s returned to his pre-serum body. Everything hurts, he cannot breathe. Several times nurses check in on him to find out why the monitors are ringing and alarming. Eventually he convinces them to remove most of the wires. He has to keep the heart monitor on since he’d been shot in the chest. 

Sharon waits with him, she checks on her phone and gets coffee. He’s only allowed to drink juice, even though he assures the nurses caffeine won’t hurt him. After what seems like hours but can’t be more than an hour, Sharon’s phone is ringing and she steps out to answer it much to Steve’s chagrin. In only minutes she’s back with a wheelchair. 

“They’re bringing Tony in,” she says. “It’s serious.”

“Serious,” he parrots back to her and there are nurses appearing around him and an orderly to help him into the wheelchair. Someone places a blanket around his shoulders and they prop up his legs so he doesn’t have to bend at the knee as they heal. They remove the wires for the heart monitor. Before they leave the room, Steve asks, “How serious? Did they say?”

Her face looks closed, pinched, and practiced. “The paramedics hadn’t seen him yet, but from what Hill said it looked like there’s evidence of torture. And-.” She pauses, glances away for a moment, and then says, “I know how much Tony means to you, Steve.”

“What? What is it?” He sees the terror, and the sorrow mixed in her eyes. Not for Tony – she barely knows him – but for him. She’s sorry for him, that he’s losing someone – that he’s lost (past tense) someone. “Is he alive? Did he make it?”

She bites at her lips and then nods. “Yeah, yeah, he’s alive. But-.” She clears her throat and when she speaks her voice cracks. “They found him hanging, Steve.”

He squints his eyes at her, trying to make sense of what she’s telling him. “I’m not, I’m not sure what you mean?” Because she cannot mean what he thinks – that cannot be it. “Hanging?”

“By the neck,” she whispers and she grits her teeth as if a wave of anger and disgust comes over her and she’s trying to keep it together.

“Hanging by the neck,” he says and his heart, wilts, collapsing and draining. “Is he dead?”

“No, they were able to get him down, but he’s not conscious.”

He’s scrambling then, because he cannot stop the action. He needs to move, and he upsets the wheelchair and he slams onto the floor before any of the nurses or Sharon can help him. As undignified as it seems for Captain America to be on the floor, crawling at their feet, desperate to get to Tony, he doesn’t care. He’s not Captain America at this moment. He’s Steve Rogers, scrawny, sickly Steve Rogers who wouldn’t let anyone beat him or back off from a fight. Sharon’s at his side, putting a hand under his arm as a nurse tries as well. He wants to throw them off, he wants to run, he wants to hit something.

Hung.

Tony’s been hung.

He heaves and someone has the sense of mind to get a small bowl under his chin. He vomits mostly bile but he keeps it up until the pain ratchets up in his head and it burns his throat. The nurse has a hand on his back, keeps murmuring platitudes, words he should find comfort in but he only hears the words _hanging by the neck_ over and again. 

“Steve, Steve.”

Someone distantly says his name but he’s thinking of Bucky’s neck in a chokehold, how he – Steve – squeezed and constricted until he dropped the targeting blade. How he used strangulation as an offense. Now, that lunatic used it against Tony, hung him. 

“Captain, please,” Sharon says and he looks up at her. Somehow he’s back in the wheelchair. His legs scream in pain, he sees spots of red on the gauze covering his knees. Red dots pepper the white bandages. The nurses immediately take to action and want to unwrap his legs and recover everything.

“No, no,” Steve says and wards them off. “Leave it. I want to go see Tony.” He’s not sure if he sounds righteous or whiny. He doesn’t care, he cannot muster his Captain America persona. It abandon him the moment he heard the word – hanging. He needs to be there, he needs to see Tony. 

“It would be best if we checked your injuries, Captain,” one of the nurses says as she goes to pick at the gauze.

“No,” he snaps and it’s harsh enough to cause her to jump back. He should apologize, but he can only swallow back the fear. Twisting in the seat, he says to Sharon, “Can we go now?”

She takes pity on him and addresses the nurses. “The Captain will return immediately following checking on Iron Man. Captain America is the leader of the Avengers and he needs to ensure the safety of his team and of us.”

“Priority,” he manages to say, though it comes out more like a rasp than a direction.

The nurse that’s hunched over him straightens and nods. Her face looks sallow and wan as she goes to the door. “I didn’t mean to delay you, Captain.”

Now, he feels like a shit, but he can’t stop to worry about her. “Thank you.” He only states as Sharon navigates the chair to the doorway, careful of his legs propped on the braces for the chair. 

“They brought him to the emergency room, but I’m not sure he’s still there,” Sharon says as they approach the elevator. “I’m going to call Sam.” She makes the call while they wait on the elevator all the while Steve’s gripping the armrests, needing to jump up but feeling all the 90 pound weakling he once was.

“They still have him in the emergency room, but they’ve triaged him to the traumatic injuries bay,” Sharon says as stuffs the phone back in her pocket. The elevator arrives and she maneuvers his chair onto the lift. 

As they descend, Steve clears his mind and says, “I appreciate what you’re doing Sharon. I know that you don’t have to be here-.”

“Don’t, Steve. We parted friends. What kind of friend would I be if I just left you in your time of need?” Her hand lightly touches his shoulder.

“You’re a better person than I am.”

She laughs. “Me? Better than Captain America, that’s saying something.”

He smirks. “I think that was Steve Rogers.”

She squeezes his shoulder and the elevator doors open. “Are you ready for this?”

Closing his eyes, if only for a moment, he nods and murmurs, “Yes.”

“Then, let’s go,” Sharon says and wheels the chair out into the chaos of the main lobby of the hospital. It only takes a few seconds to find the group – his team circling a bay. He only spots Sam, Thor, and Clint immediately. Clint looks worse for wear and Thor’s sporting a cut above his eyebrow. A nurse has Clint sitting in chair and is flashing a penlight in his eyes. There is a curtained bay, where Steve surmises that Tony is being attended to by a number of nurses and doctors if the noise and commands are anything to judge by.

As he approaches Sam crosses the distance and holds up his hands. “Do not freak out.”

“We already did that up in the room. What do you have for us?” Sharon says and Sam considers both of them before answering.

“Banner’s talking to the doctors. They’re bringing Stark up to get an image of his neck. Trying to make sure there’s no sign of-.” He hesitates and shakes his head. “Hey, man, maybe you just better wait and-.”

“Tell me? Are they checking for brain damage? Does he have brain damage?” The thought rolls and turns over in Steve’s belly. He cannot imagine what Tony – who Tony would be if he suffered brain damage.

“I don’t –they don’t know. He’s not awake yet.”

As Sam sputters over his responses, Bruce appears from the curtained area. He’s wearing hospital scrubs, which tells Steve he turned into the Hulk at some point. His eyes are like deep motes, with dark circles and pain streaked across his expression. “Steve.”

“Bruce, please tell me what’s going on.”

“He’s stable, right now.” Bruce looks at Sam. “How much does he know?”

“He knows about the state Stark was found in,” Sharon replies.

Quietly, Bruce nods and then drags a chair from the empty bay next to the one the doctors are working on Tony in, and settles next to him. Steve’s not sure he wants to spend the time listening, he’d rather burst through the curtain and find out what the hell is going on, but he trusts Bruce – so he waits.

“Steve, I want you to listen to everything I’m going to tell you. It will sound shocking, but listen first okay.”

It has to be bad if Bruce is giving him caveats and prefaces. With little else to go on though, Steve nods.

“They hung Tony by his neck with something like a dog’s choke chain.”

Steve cannot stop the involuntary release of air. Bruce places his hand on Steve’s as he clutches the arm rests of the wheelchair. 

“He was also strung up with his arms as well. Both of his arms were chained to opposite sides of the room. We think he had been bound with his arms above his head at one time, as well. But when the hanging took place, his arms were above his head, but splayed apart like this.” Bruce holds his arms above his head in a wide V formation. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Dropping his arms, Bruce continues, “This was his saving grace. When the hanging took place his arms and neck took a great deal of the pressure. Three points rather than one single point – the neck – distributed his full body weight.”

“This is good?”

“Yes,” Bruce says. “They- the doctors are still checking for internal decapitation.”

Steve gags and Sam has a hand pressed to his shoulder. “Stay with us soldier.”

“The likelihood is low, but he does have both shoulders dislocated,” Bruce says. “So they need to ensure that his head hasn’t separated from his neck.”

“Jesus, Jesus,” Steve says and his whole body vibrates. Hot prickles touch his eyes and he realizes tears are staining his cheeks. He’s not embarrassed or ashamed, he’s frightened and terrified. He wants to kill something, he wants to kill her. 

“Stay with me, Steve,” Bruce continues and Steve notices that Thor has taken up residence by his side as has Clint – who has an icepack slapped to his forehead. Steve brutally wipes the tears away.

“It’s an incomplete hanging because not all of the weight was supported by his neck. This is a good thing. Plus he only fell from about a foot, foot and a half at best. If it had been his height or greater than the outlook would be bleak.”

“Okay, and Tony’s outlook?” Steve asks and his words sound so distant and far away he’s not sure he’s speaking them. He thinks he’s looking into the wrong end of a telescope, like he’s watching a play of his life with some disconnected interest.

“There was some venous obstruction and soft tissue bruising. We’re not sure if any of the bones were fractured, but it looks unlikely. There was some laryngeal edema but not much, they were able to intubate him to help his breathing because the airway did swell to a certain degree where they were worried they might have to trach him. They’ve also stabilized his spine.”

“Do they know-.” Steve starts and then realizes he doesn’t know what to ask – at all. He’s completely lost. “What, how is he?”

“He has other injuries.”

“What other injuries? Bad?” Steve asks and watches as Bruce flicks his eyes up to Thor, if only for a moment, and then back to Steve.

“He was whipped, probably with a riding crop. Most of the lacerations are superficial and should heal without scarring, but there are a few.”

“A few,” Steve says and his voice goes mute and he can’t form anymore words.

“Steve, you gotta know something else,” Clint says. 

Steve peers up at Clint whose face is rapidly swelling along with the large bruise on his forehead. “We didn’t get her. She escaped with her goons. She has a video, a recording.”

“Yes?”

Clint looks at Sharon and then back at Steve. “It’s of you and Tony. Together, compromising.”

Steve closes his eyes again, to equilibrate and to figure out what to respond to – but there’s really only one answer, only one reason he’s here. “I want to see Tony.”

“Steve, it’ll be a bit, they’re taking him down to get some images,” Bruce says. Steve nods but he still wants to see him. 

“I understand, I’d like to see him,” Steve says.

“One other thing,” Clint says. “Natasha’s in surgery. She got a pretty bad hit. She was bleeding internally.”

“Anyone, anyone else?” Steve says and cannot believe he hasn’t checked on his team. He forces the words out. “What’s the status?”

“Don’t, Steve, you’re still injured.”

“Potts is missing,” Clint says. “They have rescue teams up on the workshop floor. But it was chaos-.”

“Clint,” Bruce warns. 

“You have to find Pepper, she means the world to Tony,” Steve says and he cannot imagine Tony surviving this only to have Pepper taken away from him. 

As he speaks, the curtain is swept aside and the nurses part for the gurney to roll by them. Steve gets his first look at Tony in more than three days. He struggles to stand up, but he can’t – his legs won’t hold him. Bruce is there, as is Thor, helping him to get to the gurney, to Tony’s side. 

There’s a tube down his throat, a brace around his neck and his arms are secured to his sides. Steve studies him, as if he’s a problem. His mind goes toward his definition as a tactician and strategist rather than the horrified boyfriend and lover. He cannot allow himself more than that – not at this moment, not when Tony needs him to be strong.

Because Steve Rogers is not strong, not right now, seeing Tony trussed up, and bruised, with whip marks marring his skin. He feels like he’s losing another piece of himself, he feels like he falling, he feels like he’s losing another piece of his heart, he feels like he’s collapsing at his mother’s side again. He remembers holding on to her, he remembers watching her die, and feeling helpless, weak, like nothing. He’s watching Tony plummet off the side of the train instead of Bucky. He’s nothing because he cannot save him.

This is Steve Rogers, and so he must pull out Captain America and hold onto the strength the mantle affords him. Thor and Bruce hold him up and he clings to the gurney, his hand reaching for Tony’s.

“Tony?”

He doesn’t answer, of course he doesn’t answer. Steve bows his head.

“Captain?” One of the nurses – she’s young, too young in his eyes- says. “We’d like to bring him down to get a CT scan of his neck and an MRI.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve says.

Another nurse chimes in. “We’ll be bringing him back up to ICU. The nurses at the reception desk can direct you.”

“I know where it is,” Steve says and Thor and Bruce help him back to the wheelchair. The medical staff move Tony away and just like that he’s gone again out of Steve’s keeping. 

“Come on, let’s get you back to your room,” Sam says, but Steve refuses.

“No, I want to wait for Tony in his room. Can you find out where?” Steve asks.

They don’t put up a fight, no one does. Eventually he’s situated in an extra bed, the hospital staff decide can fit into Tony’s ICU room. He’s not far from the area where Tony’s bed will be parked, but still, Steve feels miles away. Sharon bids him goodbye and reports that she’s going to check on the emergency personnel looking for Pepper. Clint disappears to wait on word from the doctors on Natasha’s surgery. Thor and Bruce stand outside the ICU room and Sam waits with him.

“You can go,” Steve says because he knows how long and how awful the days have been.

“Don’t be a jerk,” Sam says and crosses his arms. He’s not budging. 

“This is my fault,” Steve says. 

“Now, how do you figure?” Sam turns to him. The nurses have hooked up all the tubing and wires again. 

“I should have been able to get help sooner. He was gone for days, she did that to him. What if-.”

Sam turns to stare at him. “There’s no what ifs here. You think you could have done better? How? She shot out your legs. Even Captain America is fallible. You can’t be invincible. You’re not invincible. The docs said that if you’d been any other human being that they’d be amputating your legs. You’re lucky to be alive with the slugs to your chest. Now tell me how this is your fault again.”

“I could have stopped her. I didn’t.”

“Before or after she shot out your kneecaps?”

“You don’t get it,” Steve barks at him. He’s tired and worried and he doesn’t want to do this right now. He knows he could have tried harder. He talked with her, he’s the reason they moved her out of the Tower. Damn it, he couldn’t even see that she was a perfect avenue and resource to get information on Bucky. 

“No, I do get it. Rogers, you got something to prove? You have to be the biggest, best hero around?”

“I didn’t say that,” Steve says and wants to strike back but he knows Sam’s right. Running a hand through his hair, he puts his other one up and surrenders. “Just, can I have a minute alone?”

“Sure, but don’t go down that rabbit hole, okay?”

“I’ll try not to,” Steve says and grasps Sam’s hand.

“I’m gonna go get coffee and check on Natasha’s status,” Sam says.

“Can you update me when you find out?” 

“Sure thing,” Sam says and departs. 

It is a while before the orderlies wheel Tony’s gurney into the room. The nurses flutter about him in an array of activity. Steve takes it all in and then a doctor arrives. He’s balding and props his dark rimmed glasses on his domed head. Bruce and Thor follow him in. It’s obvious it’s time to report on Tony’s condition. 

Steve glances over at Tony, whose eyes look like hollowed out cores. The scars from the whip marks on his chest burn bright against too pale skin. 

“I’m Doctor Lee, I’m going to be Mister Stark’s attending physician. How are you today, Captain?”

“Fine, I’d like to find out about Tony?” He dismisses the doctor’s concerns about his own health, after all he has the serum. What does Tony have? 

He swallows down the bitterness.

“Okay, then, I can tell you the good news, and that’s the Mister Stark didn’t suffer from internal decapitation.”

Steve bites back any reply, he wants to rejoice, but the doctor’s expression is stern, measured, almost calculated. 

“There’s compression of the soft tissues in the neck and some deep wounding of the area right under the jaw. He does have a minor fracture of the hyoid bone.” Doctor Lee presses right under his jaw at the top of his trachea and above the voice box. “Here. It’s minor but will cause him some distress. We’re keeping the breathing tube in for now, since the swelling may cause constrictions of his airway. It will probably need to stay in place for the next day or so.”

“But his brain? Was he deprived of oxygen?” 

“We’re not sure at this point. We’ll know better once he wakes up. So, one thing at a time. We’ll take more images of his brain after we deal with the most immediate issues. His shoulders have both been reduced, but he’ll have to keep them immobile for a while and then physical therapy.”

“And the lash marks?”

“Two we will need to stitch up, the rest will probably heal without scarring.”

“How? When will he wake up?” Steve asks.

The doctor looks over to the gurney where Tony rests. “It’ll be some time. We have him on some strong medication for the pain. We’re going to get a plastic surgeon in here to take a look at the wounds, and see if they can stitch them to decrease scarring.”

“And then?”

“Then it’s a matter of time. We’ll schedule the PET scans of his brain and then re-assess from there,” the doctor says and then nods. “Now, Captain, I would like you to get some rest as well.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. “But I’d just as soon sit with Tony, in case he wakes up.”

“He won’t not tonight, probably tomorrow morning. Get rest, you’re healing and even with your serum you still have a long way to go.”

The soldier takes over in Steve and he’s agreeing and thanking the doctor. It will be another hour before the room empties, before he finds out from Clint that Natasha made it out of surgery and she’s recovering from a repaired spleen. It’s another three hours before the rescue crews call Hill who reports to Bruce that Pepper has been found, miraculously unscathed. 

He ticks down the hours and then the minutes until finally it is seconds and the room empties as the night settles over the hospital. Tony never makes a sound, only the puff and movement of the respirator vent echoes against the constant steady beep of the monitors in the room. When Steve figures that the coast is clear, he yanks back the blanket, pulls of the wires and monitors from his own chest and arms, and then slips out of bed. His knees and legs protest so that he needs to swing himself to the side of the bed and use his upper body strength to grapple over to Tony’s bed. 

It’s only a few feet, nothing more, but it feels like miles. Finally, he collapses along the side of Tony’s bed, his face buried against Tony’s side. In minutes he’s going to slide to the floor, he can’t keep himself upright much longer. He doesn’t care. 

He tangles his hand – his left hand with Tony’s left hand where the engagement ring still resides. He can touch Tony again, feel him, and note his warmth. He’s alive and here with Steve. But Steve failed. He nearly lost Tony, because he failed to protect him. He curls against Tony, he apologizes in his mind, silently vowing to never let it happen again. He holds onto Tony, not letting go, even as the pain streaks up his legs and the fire in his nerves devours him.

He doesn’t hear the door open, or realize Thor is there until his friend – a demigod – lifts him and gently places him on the gurney with Tony, being careful of the tubes and wires snaking around them both. 

“Rest thee well, my friends.” Thor leaves without another word, and Steve presses his face into Tony’s arm and weeps.


	8. Chapter 8

Through the long night, Steve keeps vigil. None of his friends or the hospital staff are able to convince him to sleep. Thor helps him to a chair and he sits up, hand clasping Tony’s, watching him. He monitors the ventilator, all the screens scattered around the bed. He watches the numbers as the blood pressure unit inflates, pauses, and then releases. He studies the pulse-ox numbers and the heart monitor. He doesn’t move.

Clint reports that Natasha woke up ready to spit nails, which is a good thing. Steve reads the relief on Clint’s expression, even though his friend is embarrassed to show the emotion with Tony teetering. 

“It’s good, I’m glad that Natasha’s feeling better,” Steve manages to say and his heart is in it; he is grateful to know one of his friends, his family will not suffer further.

“Yeah, yeah, they were able to repair her spleen. I didn’t know they could do that. It’ll be a rough recovery, but she should be okay.” Clint releases a pent up breath and his gaze shifts to Tony. “He’s going to be okay, you know that right?”

“Yes, I do.” Steve says but he doesn’t voice his concerns. He doesn’t look at Clint because if he does he might give away his fears. To think that Tony will recover unscathed from this attack is out of the question. Everything changes now, everything becomes something different. 

They had the whole world at their feet, and Steve cannot stop the images of the long windows in the playroom, before them. The wide expanse of life beneath them, while they connect and became something more.

“We’re still looking for her,” Clint says after the long pause.

“I know,” Steve replies and he knows he should put on his Captain America persona; he should direct the team – plan what should come next. But he never was one to be able to immediately pull up his bootstraps, he always needed a moment to mourn when it came to his loved ones. 

Even as he turns to Clint to approach the subject, Clint puts up a hand to stop him. “Not now, you’re still healing. Thor and Bruce are heading up the team. We have Jane doing what she can, and Pepper’s also helping. We got this. Plus Rhodes showed up and has been guarding the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Steve whispers and bows his head. His hands are useless his lap. He reaches back to touch Tony again – just to make sure he’s still there.

“I’m going, you want anything?”

Steve only smiles and shakes his head. “Tell me when Sam and Sharon get back?”

“Okay,” Clint says and stops to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, but leaves with a firm smile and nod. 

By the time Tony stirs Steve has refused breakfast and is on his way to passing on lunch as well. Tony’s hand twitches first and then his whole body jolts like he’s been shocked. He tries to reach up and to grapple with the respirator’s tubing taped to his mouth, but his arms are useless taped to his sides.

“Tony, Tony,” Steve says and hangs onto his hand to stop him from injuring himself. “Tony, stop.” Because he can’t stand, Steve cannot block Tony trying to struggle out of the bindings to stabilize his shoulders. 

Steve scrambles for the nurse’s call button and hits it as soon as he finds the small remote tucked into the cushions of the chair. A nurse appears almost instantaneously. She heads Tony off and holds down his hand. “Mister Stark, quiet. You have a ventilator in because of swelling in your throat. It’s helping you breathe. Once the doctors assess the condition of your airway, it can be removed safely. Your shoulders are being stabilized because they were both dislocated. You are safe and in the hospital now.”

Tony’s eyes are wide and stricken as if he’s unsure what she said. She keeps hands on his arms until he visibly relaxes. Once he does, she eases back and says, “Captain Rogers is here with you. You’re doing well. Hopefully, once the doctors assess your throat we’ll be able to get the tubing out.”

Tony only nods in a short, almost painful looking motion. He grimaces as he moves his head and the nurse quiets him with a hand to his shoulder. “Let me see if I can get a cold compress for your neck.”

She exits to retrieve the compress and Steve squeezes Tony’s hand. “Hey.”

Tony shifts his gaze and when he focuses on Steve the lines on his face relax somewhat. He picks up his hand in a restricted motion and reaches for Steve again. Steve clasps his hand with both of his and places his forehead down on their tangled fingers. “God, Tony, I thought you-.”

Tony cards fingers into Steve’s hair. 

Steve sits up straighter in the chair, but that causes a significant level of pain since his legs are stretched out in front of him, braced on the recliner portion of the chair. He catches Tony’s other hand, stretching to do so, and whispers, “Don’t, you don’t need to comfort me. What you’ve been through-.” Steve swallows and it feels like he’s drinking acid. “Rest, everything is going to be okay.”

He knows he should relate the information about Sin but Tony’s in recovery. The danger is still out there, waiting to lash out like a viper. He needs to protect Tony at all costs, whatever the cost, from now on. That’s the fight that’s most important. Tony clicks the tube in his mouth with his teeth and clutches Steve’s hand.

“I know you want it out, but your throat is swollen, you won’t be able to breathe.”

He’s insisted, and bites it hard. 

“No, Tony, you need it.” 

Tony rolls his eyes and then looks down, and tries to wiggle. It would be comical if every motion didn’t drain him of color.

“Does it hurt? Are you in pain?” Steve asks and checks the areas around that he can reach. There’s nothing to write with, he doesn’t even have a sketch pad or pencil. “I could call back the nurse and see if I can get something for you to write with?” Even bound like he is, he should be able to maneuver a pad and pencil.

Tony does a little thing that reminds Steve of what the USO girls called Jazz hands. But then he pokes at his chest several times- what he can reach and clicks his teeth on the tubing again.

“I can see if I can get a pencil and paper,” Steve says and searches around for the remote to call the nurse. He presses the button. “She’ll be here in a minute or two.”

Tony’s expression releases some of the tension, and, seeing the softness, Steve smiles and bows his head. “Tony, damn it. Every time we get close.” Tony pats his hand and the nurse enters. 

“Is there something?”

“Can we have a paper and pencil?”

“Oh, sure. I have a white board that we use for notes to one another, will that do?” she asks, and Steve realizes he doesn’t even know her name. She places the cold compress against Tony’s throat, he screws up his face against the cold.

“A white board would be great, thank you.”

She leaves and, in less than a minute returns with a marker and a white board that’s only as large as a tablet. “Here you go, Mister Stark. The doctors should be by soon.” She finagles the white board with the marker in a position that Tony can use and Steve can actually see. After she excuses herself to check on the doctors. 

Tony immediately he starts to scribble on it.

He flips the board for Steve to read. _Out, I don’t need it._

“Yes, you do. You had significant swelling.”

Glaring at Steve, Tony wipes off the board with the side of his hand and then jots down his objections. _I swear, I don’t need it._

Steve takes in a deep breath before he addresses Tony. “Do you even remember what happened?”

Tony slaps his hand down and then erases the board again with his hand, getting some of it on the side of his hand. _Yes, the bitch tried to hang me._

“Yes, Tony, and she very nearly succeeded.”

 _Still here!!!_ After which he draws a big smiley face.

It’s Steve’s turn to roll his eyes. “You do know that it’s only because Hulk and Thor crashed through the doors and were able to get to you, right?” Steve says and he can’t believe how very angry he is. He tries to quell it. He’s not angry with Tony, he’s not. It’s Sin he should direct his anger at, but Tony seems cavalier about the hanging and torture episode. “I think you’re in shock or denial or something.”

Tony punches at the board. _No. Fuck her, I won._

“You won, Tony she had you chained up and hung in your own damned building. She tortured you and did this because she could, and now she has a file – of us – she has a file.” Steve closes his eyes and breathes through his nose. 

_Don’t worry._ Tony scrawls over the board, that is rapidly getting smeared with black ink. His hands are stained as well. 

“You’re surprisingly chipper for someone who just had a brush with death, you know,” Steve says, and he cannot deny the fondness he feels for Tony. It always surprises him how very strong and stalwart Tony can be. While Steve stands and keeps getting back up during a fight, Tony never loses resolve even in the bleakest moments. Steve couldn’t have been more wrong during their first encounter on the Helicarrier all that time ago.

_Ha! Know something she doesn’t._

“What’s that?”

Tony raises a brow and winks at Steve. 

_Know a lot she doesn’t._ Here Tony writes a bunch of HAHAHAHA. 

Steve sighs and shakes his head. Why is this a joke? Heat crawls up his back and neck. He pinches the bridge of his nose. He pushes the anger tiding through him back and down. “This isn’t a joke.” He mutters it because he feels wrong for taking out his frustration on Tony. 

He doesn’t realize that he’s turned away, bowed his head until Tony taps on the board a few times. Peering up, Steve sees the worn look on Tony underneath the jovial facade. 

_I know, I know._ He pauses and then writes down a question. _Is JARVIS working?_

“From what Bruce told me, kind of? You’ll have to ask him about it. He was able to get JARVIS to identify where you were being held, and to clean up the code with your notes.”

Tony gives him a thumbs up sign. None of it feels right to Steve. The attitude, the careless feel to how Tony is reacting from his near death experience – it feels off kilter.

They sit quietly for some time with Steve at a distance from Tony. He feels at ends. He wants to crawl up into Tony’s bed again, touch him, hold him, know that he’s real. Yet, the state of Steve’s leg prevents him from movement, separates them. It aches through Steve like the cold of winter through his veins. The distance between them multiplies.

Tony knocks on the board and holds it up. _What is it?_

“I almost lost you, Tony.” The hatred boils up in Steve and he despises how he cannot control the feelings he has for the Red Skull’s daughter. He needs to control his anger, he needs to examine the events logically, rationally and with a cool head. Otherwise, he won’t be able to plan an attack, he cannot allow his emotions to drive his actions. “It’s too much. I need to know everything will be all right. But I can’t, because I can’t control everything.”

_Babe?_

Steve collapses onto the side of the bed again, head in hands. Gazing up at Tony, he sees the whole of his fears and his inability to save his love well up. He struggles to contain the mixture of feelings, the conflict between fear and rage, helplessness and hope. “We need to get Sin, we need to stop her, and I can’t. The doctors think it will be weeks before I’ll be up to speed again. And what she did to you, Tony, what she did?” He swallows down the bitterness, the tormented rage.

Steve doesn’t know how Tony will ever be the same, how their relationship will ever survive. Not with a video file roaming out there, and not with Tony’s memories of what she did to him.

_Babe, believe. I’m OK._

At that moment the doctors enter the room. Immediately, Tony uses the heel of his hand to wipe away their conversation and scribbles out a long list of demands, questions, and concerns. Most of the concerns revolve around Steve’s condition, but Steve’s able to belay any inquiries.

“Tony, we can deal with me later,” Steve says and asks the two doctors to proceed.

Doctor Lee presents his colleague, a young resident with thick glasses and a quiet demeanor. Steve instantly likes the young man who’s unassuming and takes copious notes in a tiny notebook. “This is Doctor Mishra. He’s a resident and will be assisting in your care.”

_Don’t care. Get tube out._

“Tony, don’t be rude,” Steve says and asks the doctor to continue. It’s amazing how well Tony’s personality gets through even when he’s effectively gagged.

“Would you mind if I check your throat?” Doctor Lee asks as he walks over to the sink, washes his hands, dries them and then slips on some gloves.

Tony taps the board and writes _go ahead_. He lifts his chin and, even from his hampered position in the chair, Steve can see the strain that it costs, the pain evident on Tony’s face. The attending doctor removes the compress, leans in and softly touches Tony along his trachea and up to his hyoid bone. Tony scratches at the blankets, and Steve reaches for his hand to hold it, and give what little support he can.

“Still tender, but not as swollen. We’ll keep that ice on for the next few hours and then schedule you for some more images. Once we can reduce the swelling we’ll remove the ventilator,” the doctor reports.

_When?_

“That all depends, doesn’t it?” Doctor Lee smiles and then both physicians leave the room. 

Though Tony’s exasperated with the doctor, he only taps a beat on the board and lies back into the cushions of the bed. Only a few minutes pass until Tony blinks lengthen and he fights sleep. The exhaustion claims him and the board tumbles out of his hands. Steve’s able to catch it before it falls to the floor, only straining his knees slightly. 

When Tony wakes hours later, the nurses have already coaxed Steve to eat lunch and to allow Thor to assist him back into his bed. The hours of worry for Tony claim Steve and he naps in his bed tucked in the corner of the hospital room. The medical staff gave up on the monitors and the lines for Steve simply because he kept ripping them out. 

As Steve opens his eyes he notes that Tony gazes at him, still silent, still frustrated. He holds up the board.

_???_

“What?” Steve shifts and the pain manages to spike enough that he involuntarily grunts. He breathes through the heated fire of healing in his joints and, when he thinks his voice steadies, adds, “What do you mean?”

_Knees? Chest?_

“Oh,” Steve says and comprehends that Tony hasn’t been given an update on his condition or that of the team. He decides to start with the team. “Updates?”

Tony indicates a yes with a thumbs up. He points specifically at Steve and then tries to smile but it’s only a sad mockery of one. Steve launches into his account, steering clear of his own status. “During your rescue, Natasha took a hit. She ended up in surgery to repair her spleen. Clint said she’s fit to be tied but in good spirits. Clint took a hit on the head, but when doesn’t he? He’s good, though, no hospital time. Both Thor and Bruce, well, are Thor and Bruce – they’re untouchable. Jane and Pepper came out of it without a scratch.” He doesn’t find it necessary to mention that Pepper had been missing in action for a few hours after they rescued Tony.

Tony hardens his gaze and digs at the air with a pointed finger at Steve. 

Letting out a heavy breath, Steve yanks at the blanket of his bed and flips open his hospital gown. The scar on his chest is nearly indistinct. “Almost gone. Nicked aorta and punctured lung. No issues with healing.” He skips over the part about the hell of surgery, and the torture of healing – how it burns with tendril-like fingers splayed out across his chest. He smiles at Tony and hopes that’s it.

Tony quirks a brow at him and gestures to his legs. 

“Oh, that, couple weeks. That’s all,” Steve says. He avoids any of the details and uses one of Tony’s tactics. “Do you need me to call the nurse? I could see if the doctor will come by and check-.”

_Knees????_

“Everything’s fine, Tony.” His response cuts off any argument and Tony shifts in his bed. Steve rubs at his forehead and says, “I’m sorry. But right now, this isn’t about me, it’s about you.”

Tony would grumble if he could make a noise. He squirms in the bed, trying to pull a Houdini with his attempts to get his arms free. Since Steve is currently in the bed across from Tony, he cannot reach him to stop the insane fight.

“Stop it, Tony.”

Unfortunately, Tony refuses to heed Steve’s advice and manages to get an arm free. Beads of sweat trickle down his temples and he tears away at the other arm as well. Without pause, he claws at the tape on his mouth.

“Stop it, Tony, stop,” Steve says and is honestly starting to panic. He gropes for the remote to call the nurses. Where the hell is his team anyhow? He presses the button a dozen times, but Tony beats the nurses to the punch and coughs as he drags the tubing free. Tears mix with the sweat and he gags, and chokes as he bends over in the bed.

Steve throws the blankets off and balances on the side of the bed, swinging himself to Tony’s side as the nurses come in. 

“Mister Stark,” the nurse yells and she must hit some alert button because a barrage of medical staff sweep into the room. Several of them yank Steve away from Tony’s side while a cadre of nurses cluck around him, helping him and chastising him at the same time.

In a rasped voice, Tony says, “Get away. Get away.”

He groans and coughs as one of the nurses put a bowl under his chin and he spits up. Two of the orderlies assist Steve into a wheelchair that one of the nurses must have retrieved. 

“Tony, let them help you. For God’s sake, you’re hurt.”

Barely audible he says, “Won’t be—hurt—if they’d just get a—way.” He taps out a rhythm on his forearm. “This---thing—on?” He waits and then says, “Activate, Ex--tremis ver--sion 2.1. DNA veri-fic-ation.” He stutters over the last words and needs to repeat them as the hospital staff mutters and attempts to help him. He has blood staining his lips but then he goes abruptly still like silence over a snow covered meadow. Quiet, frozen, and then he jerks back with a grunt seemingly coming back to himself.

“Whoa, that was a bit of a ride,” Tony says and smiles at Steve. His voice is completely normal. Even as Steve watches the wounds and injuries, the whip marks, the bruises dissipate in some kind of strange slow motion graphic video. Tony screws up his face and clenches his teeth. “Geez, gotta get some of the kinks worked out. That’s a bit abrupt.”

“Tony, what the hell is going on?” Steve asks.

The nurses have stepped away from the bed, and cluster in the corner of the ICU room. Cautious stares and murmured words cannot even cover the unease in the room. Steve works the wheels of the chair to navigate to Tony’s bed. “What the hell is going on?”

In a perfectly healed voice, Tony says, “I told you it would be okay. I told you I was okay.”

“You had Extremis all that time, all that time and you let her do this to you? You let her hurt you, and hang you?”

Tony avoids Steve’s gaze as if he’s hiding part of his reasons, but there’s no way to do that – it would be tantamount to trying to hide an elephant in the room. “She wanted Extremis, and I wasn’t going to give it to her.”

“So you allowed, let this happen?” He’s seething, he should be happy, but somehow he feels betrayed, emotionally manipulated. “You had Extremis and you could have-.”

Tony stops him with a hand up. “Whoa, wait. This is not your grandma’s or, well, Maya Hensen’s Extremis. This is a radically pared down version. Healing factor only, no superpowers, no breathing fire or exploding. It really only works with a link to JARVIS right now. Plus it’s voice activated, which I might add is a considerable weakness. Should work on a mental activation though. I hacked my transponders to JARVIS some time ago to see if I could use it-.”

“You injected yourself with it.”

Tony bites back his words as if he’s cross with Steve. “How the hell did you think I healed the whole in my chest?”

Steve can’t respond, doesn’t respond, because the frustration muddles his words.

“Listen,” Tony says and turns to the nurses observing their argument. “Can you give us some privacy here?”

One of the nurses slowly nods and then ushers the whole pack out of the door, and closes it behind her. Facing Steve, Tony slips out of bed and kneels down in front of him, hands on the wheelchair. For the first time, Steve recognizes that Tony – who had only been rescued twenty four hours ago – is in better shape than Steve after serious life threatening injuries. Before Tony tries to explain, Steve jumps in.

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful but I don’t understand. Sin put you through so much, how could you let her?”

“Extremis is weaponizable, Steve, and extremely dangerous, too. If I let her know I was physically carrying it-.” He pauses and, there’s a moment Steve thinks he experiences a spasm of fear. “I couldn’t do that.”

“God, Tony,” Steve says and caresses a hand down the line of Tony’s cheek. “You’re a braver man than I am.”

“I don’t think so,” Tony says and rises up to touch his lips to Steve’s mouth. It is a tentative brush, a grace of a kiss that promises more. He backs off. “I couldn’t activate it without JARVIS at a certain level of functionality. Truth be told, most of the time I was being held I didn’t have a choice. Right now, I have Extremis working with an upload link to JARVIS. It’s not a fully isolated and functioning system, yet. So, you see, I’m not all that brave after all.”

“You injected an unproven form of a proven dangerous agent into your system?” Steve asks. He doesn’t know whether to laugh at Tony or to cry. “You son of a bitch, what the hell are you thinking? When did you do this?”

“I had a lot of time when you and I were, you know, broken up. I had to fix Pepper, so I fixed me, too. After that it was a simple addition with some upgrades. Still needs a shit load of updates and bug fixes, but with JARVIS as it’s keeper – it’s good. Don’t know why you’re pissed off, I mean you’re the one who let a bunch of scientists experiment on you.”

“So does that mean JARVIS is in your head too?” Steve asks, ignoring the rest of the tirade.

“Not technically, I have the transponders under my skin,” Tony says, pointing to his arms. “J-man uses that to access my nervous system and my brain.”

Suddenly, Steve feels tired, worn, beaten. He slumps in the chair and the questions collide in his head. There’s something wrong here, he knows it. Tony’s not telling him everything. There’s a secret.

Steve needs to get to the root of it before it rots and the whole foundation they’ve build crumbles on top of them. 

Tony stands up and smiles as he looks down at the gown he’s wearing. Twisting on his heels, he says, “Where the hell are some pants?”

Something’s wrong.

“Can I call the nurse and get some pants?” Tony asks and paces around the room, digging through Steve’s bed in search of the call button.

According to Thor and Bruce, Sin and her gang of thugs were long gone before they arrived.

Tony starts a drum beat on the button. “Hello, anyone there?” He winks at Steve. 

Too manic, too happy. According to the doctors Tony had obviously held onto the chains as long as he could with his hands, dislocating his shoulders in the process while he tried not to hang. Then he let go. 

He was never gagged according to the footage recovered. 

“Tony?”

“Um?”

“Did you know you were in the Tower?”

Tony shrugs. “Not until right before she hightailed it out of there, why?”

He was in the Tower.

He was never gagged.

Tony could have activated Extremis before he lost his hold on the chains, before he had nearly died from being hung.

He never activated Extremis. He didn’t try to save his own life, even when he could have tried. He risked death.

Steve gazes at Tony, his heart breaks. Something is very wrong.


	9. Chapter 9

The repetition dulls the constant spin in his head. It shifts his concentration from the nightmare that haunts him to the physical needs of his body. He lifts the weighted bar against his ankle, ignoring the twinge in his knees as he drives the newly healed muscles, tendons, ligaments to their limits. He knows he should be able to take more weight, but, for once, he’s listening to Bruce and not pushing it. 

He’s had enough of hiding the pain. Concealing pain and pretending it isn’t there does nothing in the end except erode his own ability to deal with the aftermath. He shoves his leg up again, straining, holding the weight, and then dropping it down. He repeats the exercise sweat covering him as he goes through the motion. He wants to feel the dull warmth that comes over him with the repetition. It helps him to get through the day, to forget the other horror lurking in the periphery. 

Sitting upright, Steve lets his legs ease downward and swears. He’s only trading one diversion for another. He’s only hiding from different types of fears. “God damn it.”

“Didn’t know Captain America swore.”

Steve twists around to catch sight of Sam entering the gym. It’s a small corner gym down the block from the closed Tower. There’s structural damage to the Tower not only from the helicopter attack, but the assault Sin staged while Tony had been hanging in the sub-basement. The tiny gym is one that Steve frequents when he wants to get away from his team members. It isn’t special with all the newfangled equipment. It does have the weights he needs and some of the specialty items. Most of the patron recognize him and know him from previous stints in the gym and, except for an occasional nod and thumbs up, he’s left alone.

Right now, the place is relatively empty. Only two or three people are working out, back near the punching bags. 

“In the war, swore all the time,” Steve says and swings his legs around. He’s fit, but the doctor still directed him to use braces on his legs and to walk only aided by crutches. He’s listening to neither.

“Hey, you all right?” Sam says and leans against the rack of weights.

Steve raises a brow, shrugs and pulls his bag over. He has tape on his hands, but he hasn’t hit a bag in weeks. “Fine, why?”

“Stark says you’ve been missing in action most of the day.”

“Don’t need a babysitter.”

“You only just got out of the hospital, Steve, and that lunatic is still out there,” Sam says and sidles up to him, sitting on the bench. “Hey, tell me.” His voice pitches lower into a whisper.

Steve leans his elbows on his legs, leaves his hands empty, hanging on his healing knees. If he wasn’t wearing his sweats, the scars would be completely faded. No one would be able to tell he’d literally been hobbled only two weeks ago. 

“There’s something wrong,” Steve says and stares at the floor. “With Tony.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam says and the reply startles Steve. He pops his head up and frowns at Sam.

“You know?”

Sam stands up, playing with a small ball that Steve didn’t see before. “You want to go get a coffee before I drop you back at the mansion?”

Clearing his throat, Steve agrees. They’ve been staying at the old Stark Mansion down on Fifth Avenue while the Tower repairs proceed. It isn’t the best situation since the security is outdated and the building literally sits too close to the main street. They always have two or three of them on watch. Tony’s making plans to move the whole team out, probably to the old ski resort in Pennsylvania that he is renovating into an arts and science institute.

Throwing his gym bag over his shoulder, Steve conveniently forgets the crutches but Sam swings around and picks them up. He straight arms it in front of Steve.

With a backhanded shove, Steve says, “Don’t need them.”

“Doctor’s orders.”

“The doctors have no idea-.”

 

“Banner’s orders.”

Steve considers Sam for about a half minute, tears the crutches out of his hands, and then tucks them under his shoulders and follows Sam out onto the street. It’s a warm Summer day and Sam’s little coffee shop isn’t far. It’s nestled into a corner between two large law firms. 

“Here,” Sam says and opens the door. Steve makes a show of resting the crutches at the entrance to the shop and striding forward to the counter. He can almost feel the eye roll.

After they’ve ordered and found a booth, Steve cups his hand around his coffee as Sam watches him. “Tell me, man?”

“I don’t. I don’t know how to explain it,” Steve says and then sits back, eases away from the cup, the security of it. “There’s something up with Tony.”

“I thought there was something up with you. You’re the one refusing to take care of yourself, pushing your recovery-.”

“I’m fine, Sam. Even Bruce is being over cautious.”

Sam hangs his head and says, “Do you blame them? They almost lost you, we almost lost you. Captain America. We can’t lose you, of all people, we can’t lose you.”

“I’m no more important than the next Joe on the street,” Steve says. “But I get that it was traumatic-.”

“Traumatic is a nice word for it,” Sam says. “Seeing you bleeding out on the street, the Tower coming down all around us – ain’t something I want to relive any time soon.”

Steve bows his head and nods. He gets it, he really does. But what they don’t get – what his team and friends don’t get is that Tony’s suffering – even though he looks one hundred percent fine. “Tony has Extremis.” There’s no seguing that can be used to get to the subject so he jumps in feet first.

“I think everyone on the team figured that one out,” Sam says.

Steve plays with the spoon, flipping it over. It does give him some amount of pleasure that Sam has slowly been accepted by the team. But the issue hanging over Steve’s head weighs on him. “So you know he could heal himself, because that’s the main function of the Extremis he’s been able to fix and have it function correctly?” 

“I’m in the super-secret circle, yeah,” Sam replies. “Why is this important?”

“He could heal himself at any time, Sam.”

“True.”

“Any time, but he didn’t,” Steve says. “He made a conscious decision not to heal himself while she tortured him.”

“You know that’s because she would have been tipped off that he essentially fixed Extremis and had it activated inside of him, right?”

Steve rubs at the furrow between his brows and says, “Yeah, yeah, I get that. She already had a clue with the arc reactor missing, I think we all had that clue.”

“I know that tone, there’s a but there isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” Steve says with a grimace. “When she left him, he could have activated it, he could have made sure Extremis would be active so that he wouldn’t suffer injuries from the hanging.”

“Are you sure that’s true?” Sam says. “Maybe she stayed there, maybe she hung him and then left. He didn’t have a choice-.”

“But he did,” Steve says and can’t help the moisture accumulating in his eyes. “He did.” He places a hand over his eyes. “I asked him. He said she kicked the stool out, and then ran. He had time, he didn’t use it.”

Sam reaches out and touches his hand, brings it down away from his eyes. “Hey, listen man, sometimes when I see some guys and gals coming back from the zone; the battles they’ve been through, they saw their buddies die – I know a lot of them can’t get up in the morning because they don’t understand why they’re alive. They don’t understand why they have worth and their buddy didn’t.”

“Why would he think that, Sam?” Steve says and curls his hands into fists. He’s fought the anger and the pain for too long. 

“From what I understand, she showed him video clips. He’d seen what happened to you. She knew how important you are to him.”

“So what? He decides because she threatened him that-.”

“Because she threatened you,” Sam says. “Because she threatened you. He’s got these blinders on when it comes to you. I’ve seen it before, it’s a dangerous thing. He’ll do anything to save you.”

“Sacrifice himself? How does that help me?” Steve says and there’s an alarm screaming in his head, ramming in his chest. 

“If he’s out of the way-.” Sam shrugs. “Maybe she steps back, maybe it gives you the space you need to stop her, and save yourself. I read Tony as a bit of the obsessive type about people he loves.”

Steve only presses his lips together, biting back his worries, his responses. Finally he says, “I think I have to go and talk to Tony.”

“Maybe you do,” Sam replies. “But get that he might not even realize he’s done this, get that he’s completely oblivious to how he deems himself as worth less than you are to him.”

“He’s not worthless.”

“No, he sees himself as less than you,” Sam says. “He sees you as the better person.”

Steve deflates against the booth. “How am I supposed to fix this?”

Sam shakes his head. “He’s gotta come to terms with it himself. You can’t fix it for him.”

Struggling to get out of the booth (his knees ache more than he’ll ever admit), Steve pulls himself up and says, “I can damn well try.”

“You’ll just get hurt, Steve, listen to me,” Sam says.

“Sometimes you have to be willing to get hurt,” Steve says and as he’s walking away, he hears Sam mutter _that’s what I’m worried about_.

When he gets out onto the street with gym bag in hand but sans crutches he realizes that walking the short blocks to the mansion might be a bit out of his reach with the throbbing ache returning to his legs. He hails a cab and the driver instantly knows him – won’t charge him. Steve begs him to take a handful of cash, but he refuses and only asks for an autograph that Steve scribbles on some old newspapers and exits the cab.

Once at the mansion, Steve shuffles up the walk and feels all of his ninety plus years. Clint sees him first, he perches on an upper balcony keeping watch. He flings himself over the balcony and, with a wide arc, ends up like an acrobat catching another balcony on the way down to drop in front of Steve.

“Need any help, Captain?”

“Clint, good moves,” Steve says. “And no, I’m fine.”

As they enter the house through the main door, Clint says, “I want you to know that we’re – all of us – searching for her.”

“I know,” Steve says and recognizes a worried desperation in the archer’s eyes. “What?” He casts his gym bag in the corner near the closet of the vestibule. 

Clint doesn’t meet his eyes and shakes his head as he says, “I want you to know that I don’t, I don’t think anything about what I saw.”

“What you saw?” Steve narrows his eyes and then it hits him. The recording. They were sent a recording by Sin that must have been made through her hack of JARVIS. He clears his throat and says, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Clint studies him. His expression not judgmental but more thoughtful. “Are you happy with Stark? With Tony that is? Are you happy with him?”

Steve smiles, and it tugs at his heart. It hurts, but in a good way. “Yeah, yeah, I asked him to marry me because I love him, Clint.”

“Good, that’s good.” Clint bites his lip and says, “If you want I could give him the shovel talk.”

Chuckling, Steve says, “No, and I have no idea what that is. But no, I’m good. Do you know where Tony is?”

“In the basement, his father’s old workshop.”

Steve smiles and claps Clint on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

Heading toward the basement, Steve thinks twice and decides maybe he should fix something to eat first. He switches gears and ends up in the kitchen and finds Natasha sitting with Pepper at the table. He greets them and then attacks the refrigerator, looking for an appropriate snack that will entice Tony.

He settles on fruit, and tosses together a fruit salad as Natasha turns to him and says, “Not listening about the crutches.”

“Hmm, forgot them at the coffee shop, I think,” he says and ignores the look that must bore into the back of his skull from her. 

He searches the pantry next to the kitchen for something to drink, something healthy, but gives up and grabs a bottle of wine. 

“A word of caution?” Natasha says as he sets up a tray to bring to Tony.

“What’s that?” He purposefully doesn’t turn around to face her, maybe she’ll lose her nerve and stop badgering him. 

“I never thought Captain America would do the duck and cover,” Natasha says.

“Not talking to Captain America right now,” Steve replies and opens up a cupboard for glasses, snags two and places them on the tray.

“So I’m doubly surprised, now.”

It’s enough to cause Steve to give her a glance over his shoulder. “What?” He peers at Pepper who’s watching the entire scene and then back at Natasha. “What’s your point?”

“You need to take care of yourself, before you try and take care of everyone else, Steve,” Natasha says and Pepper stands up behind her. Steve faces them, with his back to the counter, leaning against it. He studies both of them, Natasha’s careful with her features like she’s always is while an expression of fear runs over Pepper’s face.

“I’m fine.”

“You were effectively taken out of a fight even before it started. Captain America couldn’t protect the one he loves the most in this world,” Natasha says, she narrows her gaze at him but before she launches into her full profile mode Steve puts his hand up to ward her off.

“Stop, before you go into your little tirade, I know what’s going on, I was there. What I’d like is for everyone to settle down and mind their own business. In my day, you would have some respect for others and allow them some privacy.” 

“Tirade, that’s new. Stark’s starting to rub off on you,” Natasha comments and Pepper jerks a little as if she’s insulted.

He glances between the two of them, decides better than to engage them. “Have a good afternoon, ladies.” He leaves with both of their eyes trailing him, causing a hot prickling up his neck. He goes to the mansion’s one elevator and hits the button with his elbow. 

Entering, he presses the lower level and breathes a sigh of relief when the doors close. Falling against the back of the elevator, Steve closes his eyes and memories of the Tower come at him. He hadn’t recalled the moments in the elevator - how he struggled across the observation deck floor, the pain as he stretched to reach the buttons, how he begged JARVIS to answer him- until now. He drops his head back onto the wall and opens his eyes, staring at the lights of the elevator in the ceiling. 

The doors open. He clears his head and steps out. What he finds is a mess of equipment scattered over the floor. The lighting comes from a few naked bulbs. Yet across the large basement in the corner, Steve spots a flickering light and he immediately recognizes an old movie projector running with the film showing on the cider blocks of the wall. 

Steve picks his way through the piles of parts and machines, careful to balance the tray with the food and wine. “Tony?”

For a moment no one answers and then there’s a movement in the shadows and Tony stands up in a trunk with its lid open. Steve says, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he says and looks around as if he’s just awoken. “Everything, what? Why?”

“I wanted to,” Steve says and points to the tray as the film catches his eyes. “Bring you something to eat. What are you watching?”

“Something from dad’s files-.” Tony says and stretches to turn off the projector but it’s out of his reach and Steve steps in his way. He concentrates on the movie.

“That’s from my training camp. I didn’t even know those films still existed.”

“Dad, Dad saved everything,” Tony says and smiles. “What are you doing up and about, Babe?” 

Even with Extremis, a haggard gray pales Tony’s complexion. Steve glances around the heaps and piles of equipment, cabinets, and trunks all around him. He settles for the card table that the projector sits on. Sliding the tray onto the table, Steve abandons it there and turns back to Tony.

“What’s going on?”

“Checking out old files, you know figuring out-.” Tony tries for a dodge but doesn’t succeed.

“Really?” Steve says and crosses his arms. He’s not having any of Tony’s bullshit today. He’s tired, probably shouldn’t be standing for so long after the work out and the walk; his nerves fray. “Try again.”

Tony bites at his lips and climbs out of the trunk. “Don’t read anything into it.”

“Read anything into it? You’re hiding out in the basement watching old films of me before Project Rebirth.” The flickering film plays over Tony’s face as he moves into the frame. “What am I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony says and walks around him to hit the projector. It finally turns off, leaving them in a dimly lit room with shadows all around them. 

“I’m talking about the whole thing, Tony. You don’t get tortured and come home to watch old movies. It doesn’t work that way,” Steve says.

“It does for me,” Tony says. “I’ve been through the torture gig before, you forget. I can handle it.”

“She whipped you, she beat you, she threatened to out you with films she had JARVIS take,” Steve says. “She breached your most private moments.”

“And what about you? You’re fine with the idea she knows you play submissive, to me, to Tony fucking Stark?” And now, Steve sees it. The half tormented streak through Tony’s expression; his eyes hollow and strained. 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Steve says because it’s true. He isn’t saying that; it disturbs him on many levels that she has leverage over him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Tony says and deflates as he pushes through the columns of junk. “I looked at what she sent to the team. She sent it on internal servers. I’m not certain she was able to get it off the internal servers. I have it rigged so that our internal mail can’t be sent externally. I’m not one hundred percent certain she didn’t figure out how to bypass JARVIS’ security on downloads of private video recordings of me, but it looks good. I don’t think she-.”

“That’s not the point,” Steve says and catches Tony’s arm to turn him around. “What’s going on, Tony?”

Tony lifts his head but doesn’t focus on Steve, instead he eyes the space on the wall where the film had run. Dropping down onto the heaps he sits and Steve follows him, kneeling at his feet. 

“I thought I understood, you know. I thought that with Extremis I’d be,” Tony says and gulps back the words.

“Tony?”

“I’d thought I’d be worth it, you know. That I was something,” Tony says and crumples further into himself.

“What?” Steve murmurs. The wild swing from defiant to acquiescent worries him. It’s not like Tony to give in so easily. “I don’t. You’re worth it. Why would you think that you’re not?”

He swings back. Tony’s gaze is sharp like the blade’s edge. “Did you see yourself? Did you see? You’re so earnest and worthy. You, this little skinny, scrawny assed kid, you’re training for war, for battle.”

“Yes, that’s what’s happened,” Steve says and he feels like he’s grappling for purchase, trying to figure out what made Tony’s eyes vacuous and hopeless. “Come and eat.” He places his hands on Tony’s knees.

“No, I don’t think you get it,” Tony says and then clamps his mouth shut as if he knows he’s revealed too much, as if he doesn’t want to tread in areas that are too revealing.

“Tony, you have to tell me.” He gathers Tony’s hand to his chest, fingering the engagement ring. “If we’re going to get married, we have to be honest. What’s going on?”

Loss shifts over Tony’s features and then he bows his head as if in defeat. “I felt this way before, you know. It comes back – maybe it’s a disease.”

He clears his throat and explains, “In the good old days I would drink myself into a stupor and have tons of meaningless sex. At one point, at the lowest point, I let the thing in my chest eat me alive, because what the hell, right?”

As he listens to Tony, a lance runs through Steve’s heart. The words are sharp and clean and truthful, but at the same time painful and searing. 

“I thought Extremis would make things even, help me to help you,” Tony says and his hands are over Steve’s holding on as if he might flounder and fall into the abyss.

“Tony, tell me why you didn’t use Extremis earlier, after she left, when you were going to die?” He cannot bring himself to say hanging.

Instead of addressing the question, Tony cups Steve’s jaw in his hand and smiles. He leans down and tips his forehead to Steve and sighs.

“Please,” Steve says.

“Maybe she broke me,” he says and it’s flippant as if he’s trying for a joke.

“Please,” Steve says and stays steady at his feet.

Relenting Tony reclines back and his shoulders slump, he’s crumbling before Steve. “Why would I? You know, why would I? I had to save you, Steve. But to do that I realized something.” He swallows reflexively against the phantom choke chain. “Sometimes even with the shining suit of armor, the biggest guns, it doesn’t fucking matter. Because you can’t save the ones you love, you’re screwed and maybe it would be better to fucking give in. Maybe if we surrendered they’d leave us the fuck alone.”

“They?” He asks because he’s not sure Tony’s only talking about Sin.

“Them, all of those fuckers,” Tony says and he’s abruptly on his feet, pacing. “I am so sick to death of having my life in an upheaval because of them. I make a suit of armor, they try and steal it, or blow up my house, or hunt you, or fucking breath fire, or build flying fortress in the sky to kill us all. It never ends, and I so want it to end.

“So I gave in, I surrendered. But you have to know, Babe, I did it for you.”

Stunned, Steve rises to his feet – no mean feat considering the pain in his newly healed legs. “You did it for me?” He’s physically ill, nauseous from the truths being laid bare.

“If we change the equation, if we say fuck it and give in, maybe just maybe they’ll be satisfied for once. And leave you at peace, safe.”

“You sacrificed yourself on some, for some deluded idea that-.”

“It isn’t half assed or crazy. You have to get that if you make a sacrifice, you do it with your weakest player. I did it for the team.”

“You took one for the team?” Steve says and he’s incredulous. “You would have let her kill you?” And now he has no problem screaming the words. “You would have let her hang you?”

Tony doesn’t back down. “It’s logical. If you would just listen instead of being a self-righteous prick. Giving her satisfaction should have allowed the team time to hunt her down and kill her.”

“Oh that worked well, didn’t it?” Steve says. “What you were playing possum?”

“Fuck, no,” Tony says and glares at Steve. “What? You’re allowed to throw your fucking shield down and be beaten while shot to hell for your old boyfriend and I can’t take one for you.”

“It’s not the same, Tony,” Steve says. “It isn’t even close. You could have saved yourself after she left.”

“I took one for you,” Tony snaps. “I did this for you. When I found out you were still alive, I kept her focus on me. I did this for you.” His rage heats the room, turns it red and burning and brighter than a thousand bulbs. “I kept her focus on me. _For you_. I would do it again, and again. I did this for you. If I survived then she would come back, she could hurt you again. She will hurt you again. Because she wanted Extremis, and she would hurt you, if she thought she could get it from me. I let her do it because I wanted you to have peace. I wanted you to be safe.”

Tears stream down Tony’s face, spittle clings to his beard. It doesn’t make any sense, Steve knows that but he crosses the space between them and seizes Tony in his arms. For one horrible moment, Tony struggles away, but then collapses into Steve’s embrace and weeps. 

“I couldn’t save you, I couldn’t save you,” Tony murmurs over and again. 

It takes long moments, exhausting moments before Steve can break through to Tony, before he can lead him upstairs to their bedroom in the mansion. The room is large with sun streaming into the huge paned windows. Steve doesn’t draw the curtain because they need to the light. He brings Tony to bed, and joins him. They both curl into one another and Tony holds onto him as an anchor. 

After a long while, Steve kisses Tony, where the salt of his tears still stain his face. They are bandaged and wounded soldiers, but underneath they are broken souls. There’s no logic or rational purpose to how they get through the horror in their lives. He holds onto Tony as Tony holds onto him. 

He never lets go, he never will, but he fears what may become of them in the dark journey ahead.

**EPILOGUE**

**Thor**  
He stands near the balcony of the mansion. The large doors are open and the summer breeze beckons. He’ll be leaving in only a little while. He glances up to the open sky and tries his hardest not to call the thunder, the rain and clouds down upon this city.

This city, his family on Midgard needs peace and he intends to allow them these sacred moments. He has seen shattered souls before in his days as a warrior, but what he’s seen these last weeks has shaken his faith in the truth of this universe. 

Bruce, the mild doctor, walks up to Thor and hands him a cup. It is the brew they call coffee and he finds it strangely satisfying in his inner turmoil.

“They’ll get over it, you know,” Bruce says. His confidence is somewhat reassuring even to one so much older than the humans. “Eventually. Tony has a death wish, Steve is even and steady. He’ll bring him back from the edge.”

“I wonder though, if they are well fit for one another,” Thor questions. “How far you will go for one you love does not necessarily show the love you have.”

“That’s a little deep,” Bruce says and smiles at him.

“It is what my mother might say to me. She was a wise woman.” Thor looks over the city, this foreign city. “I miss her.”

They fall silent for moments and then Thor breaks it. “You know, the Valkyries are said to be the choosers of the slain in battle. The chosen of the Valkyrie go to Valhalla, my beautiful Asgard for reward.”

He listens. “There are conflicting mythologies on Earth, some of them comforting, many not so much.”

“I wonder what the Valkyries would think of our good Captain and the Man of Iron. What would they say or do?”

“I don’t know what death’s angels might say about Tony and Steve, but what I can tell you is that they both need to heal. They’ve been through too much, we’ve all been through too much in the past years.”

“This much is true, Doctor.” He glances to the city again and it seems a distant thing, though too close, too demanding, too much for a few to defend and guard against the evil that hides in the shadows. “For now, let us keep these death’s angels at bay and ensure the safety and peace of our dear friends.”

He raises his tea cup to Thor’s and he lightly clinks it. “To peace.”

“To peace.”

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter will shift POV from team members to Steve, or Tony... therefore the POV will change throughout this story ...thus the reason I had to move from single POV (Tony) to a multiple POV structure for this story, and the reason why I split it from the previous one.
> 
>  **New Note** From here on out I will not weave most of what is MCU canon into this series anymore. It's gone too far afield to do that. Plus from interviews, IM3 director and writer denied Tony used Extremis on himself - which I find completely absurd. How else would he fix the damned hole in his chest?
> 
>  **Chapter 9** \- Yes that is the end of this story. The next story when published will be called _Executive Summary_. It will be the last story of this verse.
> 
> Thank you for your continued support of this series. Because of your feedback and support - I have expanded this series beyond what I imagined. I hope you will continue to enjoy the series. And yes I realize this was a part of a dom/sub series with no sex at all. I didn't think it fit in this story. I apologize if I disappointed anyone! 
> 
> Words and thoughts or idea about this series go to my tumblr and leave an ask.


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